In this thrilling conclusion to Alice's adventures in The Forbidden Library she must lead her band of friends, magical beings, and creatures against the collected might of the Old Readers—perfect for fans of Story Thieves, Inkheart, Coraline, and Harry Potter. When Alice defeated her uncle Geryon and declared war on the totalitarian ways of the Old Readers, she knew she would have a hard fight ahead. What she didn't anticipate was the ruthlessness of the Old Reader—who can control magic and enter worlds through books. All the creatures she promised to liberate and protect are being threatened, and slowly all of Alice's defenses are being worn away. So when Ending (the giant cat-like creature who guards the magical labyrinth in Geryon's library) hints at a dangerous final solution, Alice jumps at the chance, no matter the cost to her life. She and her friends—a fire sprite, Ashes the cat, and the other apprentice Readers she met during her previous adventures—go on a quest to free the one creature possibly strong enough to overturn the Old Readers once and for all. But before it’s all over, Alice will be betrayed, her true identity will be revealed, and she’ll have to be willing to give up the person she loves the most. This is beautifully written, classic, bold historical fantasy—brave, bloody, action-packed and adventurous—with a girl at the center.

The Forbidden Library kicks off an action-packed fantasy series with classic appeal, a resourceful heroine, a host of magical creatures, and no shortage of narrow escapes--perfect for fans of Story Thieves, Coraline, Inkheart, and Harry Potter Alice always thought fairy tales had happy endings. That--along with everything else--changed the day she met her first fairy When Alice's father goes down in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with her uncle Geryon--an uncle she's never heard of and knows nothing about. He lives in an enormous manor with a massive library that is off-limits to Alice. But then she meets a talking cat. And even for a rule-follower, when a talking cat sneaks you into a forbidden library and introduces you to an arrogant boy who dares you to open a book, it's hard to resist. Especially if you're a reader to begin with. Soon Alice finds herself INSIDE the book, and the only way out is to defeat the creature imprisoned within. It seems her uncle is more than he says he is. But then so is Alice.

The dark and thrilling sequel to the book Kirkus called, "Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, and Inkheart all rolled into one" Alice has her first adventure outside Geryon's library after he volunteers her to work with five other apprentice Readers, including Isaac, to capture a rogue apprentice who murdered his master. But none of them realize that the library of the late rival Reader is still a working deadly labyrinth, or that the vicious guardian is still protecting it. As they face the fight of their lives, Alice learns much more about Isaac, Geryon (her own master), and the fate of her father. "Wexler is an able builder of magical worlds and creatures, with labyrinths, an enchanted library, and a feisty, swashbuckling heroine at the center. A story rich in action and allegory—fantasy fans will want to hang on for what comes next."—Kirkus Reviews

An action-packed middle-grade fantasy with classic writing, a resourceful heroine, a host of magical creatures, and no shortage of narrow escapes—for fans of Story Thieves, Inkheart, Coraline, and Harry Potter. For Alice, danger threatens from inside the library as well as out. Having figured out the role her master and uncle, Geryon, played in her father's disappearance, Alice turns to Ending—the mysterious, magical giant feline and guardian of Geryon's library—for a spell to incapacitate Geryon. But, like all cats, Ending is adept at keeping secrets and Alice doesn't know the whole story. Once she traps Geryon with Ending's spell, there's no one to stop the other Readers from sending their apprentices to pillage Geryon's library. As Alice prepares to face an impending attack from the combined might of the Readers, she gathers what forces she can—the apprentices she once thought might be her friends, the magical creatures imprisoned in Geryon's library—not knowing who, if anyone, she can trust.

Philosophers have largely ignored sleep, treating it as a useless negativity, mere repose for the body or at best a source for the production of unconscious signs out of the night of the soul. In an extraordinary theoretical investigation written with lyric intensity, The Fall of Sleep puts an end to this neglect by providing a deft yet rigorous philosophy of sleep. What does it mean to "fall" asleep? Might there exist something like a "reason" of sleep, a reason at work in its own form or modality, a modality of being in oneself, of return to oneself, without the waking "self" that distinguishes "I" from "you" and from the world? What reason might exist in that absence of ego, appearance, and intention, in an abandon thanks to which one is emptied out into a non-place shared by everyone? Sleep attests to something like an equality of all that exists in the rhythm of the world. With sleep, victory is constantly renewed over the fear of night, an a confidence that we will wake with the return of day, in a return to self, to us--though to a self, an us, that is each day different, unforeseen, without any warning given in advance. To seek anew the meaning stirring in the supposed loss of meaning, of consciousness, and of control that occurs in sleep is not to reclaim some meaning already familiar in philosophy, religion, progressivism, or any other -ism. It is instead to open anew a source that is not the source of a meaning but that makes up the nature proper to meaning, its truth: opening, gushing forth, infinity. This beautiful, profound meditation on sleep is a unique work in the history of phenomenology--a lyrical phenomenology of what can have no phenomenology, since sleep shows itself to the waking observer, the subject of phenomenology, only as disappearance and concealment.

Challenging the view that the fifteenth century was the "Drab Age" of English literary history, Seth Lerer seeks to recover the late-medieval literary system that defined the canon of Chaucer's work and the canonical approaches to its understanding. Lerer shows how the poets, scribes, and printers of the period constructed Chaucer as the "poet laureate" and "father" of English verse. Chaucer appears throughout the fifteenth century as an adviser to kings and master of technique, and Lerer reveals the patterns of subjection, childishness, and inability that characterize the stance of Chaucer's imitators and his readers. In figures from the Canterbury Tales such as the abused Clerk, the boyish Squire, and the infantilized narrator of the "Tale of Sir Thopas," in the excuse-ridden narrator of Troilus and Criseyde, and in Chaucer's cursed Adam Scriveyn, the poet's inheritors found their oppressed personae. Through close readings of poetry from Lydgate to Skelton, detailed analysis of manuscript anthologies and early printed books, and inquiries into the political environments and the social contexts of bookmaking, Lerer charts the construction of a Chaucer unassailable in rhetorical prowess and political sanction, a Chaucer aureate and laureate.