Weedon Grossmith's 1892 book presents the details of English suburban life through the anxious and accident-prone character of Charles Porter. Porter's diary chronicles his daily routine, which includes small parties, minor embarrassments, home improvements, and his relationship with a troublesome son. The small minded but essentially decent suburban world he inhabits is both hilarious and painfully familiar. This edition features Weedon Grossmith's illustrations and an introduction which discusses the story's social context.

Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to discover that Fillory—a fictional utopia—was actually real. But even as a Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring.

Accompanied by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off—only to somehow wind up back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they’d hoped. As the pair struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, Quentin is forced to rely on Julia’s illicitly learned sorcery as they face a sinister threat in a world very far from the beloved fantasy novels of their youth.

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

Cover art by Didier Massard,

From Publishers Weekly

Gross, who's partnered with James Patterson on a number of bestsellers (Lifeguard, etc.), mixes murder, suspense, sex and romance as capably as his mentor in his assured second solo thriller (after The Blue Zone). Charles Friedman, a New York hedge fund trader, perishes in a bombing at Grand Central Station that destroys the railroad car in which he was riding one morning from his home in Greenwich, Conn. Ty Hauck, head of the Greenwich police's violent crime unit, enters the picture when a hit-and-run victim turns out to have a vague connection to Friedman. Soon, Friedman's widow and her kids are threatened by men searching for vast sums of money her late husband never earned. The stakes rise as Hauck's involvement shifts from professional to personal. While the reader will occasionally see the next drop, tunnel or curve looming far ahead, the roller-coaster thrills are still there in abundance. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The second solo novel from frequent James Patterson cowriter Gross is much better than his first. This one begins with a bang, as a bomb explodes in a commuter train station, killing several people, including New York City hedge-fund manager Charles Friedman. At roughly the same time, a suspicious auto accident kills a young man in Greenwich, Connecticut. The detective on that case, Ty Hauck, soon discovers an odd connection between the hit-and-run and the bombing. He investigates and discovers that Charles Friedman was not the man he appeared to be. He also forges a connection with the dead man’s wife, Karen, that leads him into uncharted waters. This is a tightly written corporate-style thriller very much in the mold of Joseph Finder, with a likable protagonist and a story that combines traditional thriller elements with a more gentle, emotional subplot. --David Pitt

Book description to come.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011: This second volume in Lev Grossman’s celebrated series picks up just after the events of its 2009 prequel The Magicians. Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia are now the High Kings and Queens of Fillory, a fantastic realm not unlike Narnia, and they pass their days “deliquescing atom by atom amid a riot of luxury.” To ease his royal boredom, Quentin embarks on a quest with Julia. Despite his romantic visions of heroic feats and easy accolades, the quest goes horribly awry, and they find themselves back in the depressingly real world of Chesterton, Massachusetts. With the help of seedy underground magicians, a dragon, and a young boy named Thomas, they undertake a desperate journey back to Fillory. Grossman’s writing here is sharp and self-aware, and the characters feel like people you actually know, but cooler: they are delightfully profane and dripping with irony, they are arrogant and shallow, they are finding their way in a magically perfect world that somehow still lets them down, and they are learning to fight for the things they love. The Magician King is a triumph of (and an homage to) modern fantasy writing, and a must-read for grown-up fans of Narnia and Harry Potter. --Juliet Disparte

Review

"[A] serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out."
-The New York Times (Editor's Choice)

"A spellbinding stereograph, a literary adventure novel that is also about a privilege, power and the limits of being human. The Magician King is a triumphant sequel."
-NPR.org

"[The Magician King] is 'The Catcher in the Rye' for devotees of alternative universes. It's dazzling and devil-may-care...Grossman has created a rare, strange and scintillating novel."
-The Chicago Tribune

"The Magician King is a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."
-The Boston Globe "Grossman has devised an enchanted milieu brimming with possibility, and his sly authorial voice gives it a literary lift that positions The Magician King well above the standard fantasy fare."
-The San Francisco Chronicle

"Grossman expands his magical world into a boundless enchanted universe, and his lively characters navigate it with aplomb."
-The New Yorker

"Grossman is brilliant at creating brainy, distinct, flawed, complex characters, and nearly as good at running them through narrative gauntlets that inventively tweak the stories that generations have grown up on."
-The Portland Oregonian

"The Magician King, the immensely entertaining new novel by Lev Grossman, manages to be both deep and deeply enjoyable."
-The Chicago Sun-Times

"Readers who have already enjoyed The Magicians should lose no time in picking up The Magician King. For those who haven't, read both books: Grossman's work is solid, smart and engaging adult fantasy."
-Miami Herald

"Now that Harry Potter is through in books and films, grown-up fans of the boy wizard might want to give this nimble fantasy series a try."
-New York Post

"The Magician Kingis Grossman's sequel to The Magicians, and while it is every bit as delightful and smart as the first one, it's a very different kind of book... The Magician Kingis at once an existential exercise that angrily shakes escapism by its shoulders and demands that life have a purpose, and a story about extraordinary deeds, heroism, magic and love-all the stuff that makes escapism go. It's a fantastic trick that makes this into a book that entertains and disturbs at the same time."
-Boing Boing

"Lev Grossman's The Magician King is a fresh take on the fantasy- quest novel-dark, austere, featuring characters with considerable psychological complexity, a collection of idiosyncratic talking animals (a sloth who knows the path to the underworld, a dragon in the Grand Canal), and splendid set pieces in Venice, Provence, Cornwall and Brooklyn."
-The Daily Beast

"In this page-turning follow-up to his best-selling 2009 novel The Magicians, Grossman takes another dark, sarcastically sinister stab at fantasy, set in the Narnia-esque realm of Fillory."
-Entertainment Weekly

"The Magician King is clearly the middle book in a trilogy, but it's that rare creature that bridges the gap between tales and still stands on its own. And just as the first book showed that growing up is hard no matter how much power you have, it shows that becoming an adult involves far more than just reaching the right age."
-A.V. Club

"Fabulous fantasy spiked with bitter adult wisdom-not to be missed."
-Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Fans of The Magicians will find this sequel a feast and will be delighted that a jaw-dropping denouement surely promises a third volume to come."
-Booklist

A complete chronicle of the history of everyone's favourite junior wizard - from the moment Rowling first conceived the character on a train ride, tothe Pottermania that has followed the publication of each novel and release of each film adaptation. Broken down month by month and year by year, this one-of-a-kind reference covers all major and minor news events centring on the world of Harry Potter,interweaving quotes from the film's cast and crew members - among them, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint; and directors Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaran and Mike

Mörderische Tage Berlin im Winter 1932. Inspektor Kraus ist bei der Berliner Polizei eine Legende. Im Weltkrieg war er ein Held, und nun hat er einen gefährlichen Kinderschänder gefasst. Doch als Jude sieht er die Entwicklung in Deutschland mit größter Besorgnis, zumal er Kontakte zu den höchsten Kreisen hat und weiß, was von Hitler zu erwarten ist. Als in der Spree eine Frauenleiche gefunden wird, ruft man Kraus. Die junge Frau ist schon länger tot. Auffällig sind die Wunden an ihren Beinen. Man hat ihr die Knochen unter dem Knie abgetrennt. Wenig später verschwindet die Prinzessin von Bulgarien aus dem Hotel Adlon, und Kraus erhält von Hindenburg persönlich den Auftrag, sie zu finden. Er glaubt an einen eher harmlosen Kriminalfall ¿ doch er wird auf dramatische Weise eines Besseren belehrt. Ein spannender Kriminalroman voller Atmosphäre über das Deutschland der dreißiger Jahre.

Wassili Grossmans Gesellschaftsepos über die Schlacht um Stalingrad ist wie Tolstois Krieg und Frieden eines der wichtigsten Werke der russischen Literatur – ein Meisterwerk, durchdrungen von enormer erzählerischer Kraft, von tiefer Einfühlung in die Leiden der Opfer und einer umfassenden Erkenntnis über die Mechanismen hinter der Tragödie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Als Anfang Februar 1943 die 6. deutsche Armee in Stalingrad kapituliert, bedeutet dies nicht nur die Wende im Zweiten Weltkrieg, für die Sowjets ist Stalingrad auch ein Wendepunkt in ihrem Verhältnis zu Diktatur und Terror. Mit großer Anteilnahme beschwört Wassili Grossman Episoden aus dem Kampf an der Wolga, erzählt vom Häftlingsleben und -sterben in deutschen KZ, Gefangenenlagern und in den sowjetischen Gulags, wobei die frappierende Verwandtschaft von Nationalsozialismus und Sowjetregime offengelegt wird. Ob der Physiker Strum und die weitverzweigte Stalingrader Familie Schapownikow, der in einem deutschen Lager inhaftierte Michail Mostowskoi, die deutschen und sowjetischen Militärs, Wissenschaftler, Soldaten und Bürger – Wassili Grossman hat die vielen Einzelschicksale zu einem groß angelegten Erzählkosmos verwoben, der trotz der Schrecken des Totalitarismus von der einen Hoffnung nicht lässt: der einfachen menschliche Güte, die selbst dann ihre Wirkung zeigt, wenn die äußeren Ereignisse gleichgültig und brutal über sie hinweggehen. Pressestimmen »Ein bewegendes und großartiges Buch über das 20. Jahrhundert.« Joschka Fischer im Deutschlandradio (Lesart) »Und wer noch lesen kann und lesen will, wer sich erschüttern lassen kann durchs Lesen, wer die Wahrheit sucht im Lesen, Lebendigkeit, Liebe und Geschichte, der muss dieses Buch lesen.« Volker Weidermann in der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung Klappentext »Monumental angelegt, kreist das ganze Werk um die Schlacht von Stalingrad. Seinem Vorbild Tolstoi folgend, erzählt Wassilij Grossman die Geschichte einer Familie in den Schrecknissen des Krieges. Schließlich dringt er in das ein, was man das Hinterland des Hinterlandes nennen könnte, in die Konzentrationslager und die Gulags. Und doch, so versichert der Autor, ist nicht alles verloren, solange es noch Güte gibt ...« (Le Figaro)

‘Fists’, ‘Horses’ and ‘The Monkey’: three powerful coming-of-age stories about boys confronting reality, and fighting to stay alive in a man’s world. In ‘Fists’, a teenage amateur boxer steps into the ring for the first time, and finds himself in a face-off with Life in all its muscular force; in ‘Horses’, two brothers embark on their first forays into adulthood, each learning to play a man’s game in his own painful way; and in ‘The Monkey’, a young man realizes that in order to stay sane and survive in this world, we have to sacrifice our childhood dreams.

Told in a spare and powerful voice reminiscent of Hemingway and Salinger, Grossi’s stories explore the rite of passage each of us faces in our youth — and what it means to be a man in our time.