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,

This year, like every other, the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city of undesirables. Cloaked in the protection of their sorcery, they move with no fear of the vagrants and miscreants who despise them and their work—until one enraged girl, barely more than a child, hurls a stone at the hated invaders... and effortlessly penetrates their magical shield.

What the Magicians’ Guild has long dreaded has finally come to pass. There is someone outside their ranks who possesses a raw power beyond imagining, an untrained mage who must be found and schooled before she destroys herself and her city with a force she cannot yet control.

Jack Collins’s business trip to Las Vegas is anything but fun and games. Why? Because his boss is Merlin the Magician—and Jack’s job is saving the modern world from ancient dark forces.

A centuries-old legend, the Old Man of the Mountain, has returned with a vengeance. This time he has science on his side—a vial of biological plague germs as deadly as any black magic—and he plans to sell it to the highest bidder. The winner could be demon, devil, or demigod. Either way, the loser is humanity. But a new gambler is vying for a piece of the action: Jack Collins. And he’s packing a weapon that strikes fear in the hearts of humans and nonhumans alike: advanced mathematics…

Gwyn never thought of himself as a magician. Mostly he was just a regular boy with an irregular family — a nervous mother, a half-dotty grandmother, a sister missing for four years, and a father who blames him relentlessly for his sister's disappearance.

But on his tenth birthday, Gwyn's grandmother gives him five unusual gifts. "Time to find out if you are a magician, Gwyn. Time to remember your ancestors. If you have inherited the power, you can use it to get your heart's desire."

How could he use a brooch, a piece of dried seaweed, a scarf, and a tin whistle? And what of the small, broken horse with the wild expression, wearing the tag Dim hon. Not this. Gwyn is a dangerous magician until he learns the self-reliance and understanding his magic requires.

Jenny Nimmo has woven a vividly imagined, unearthly world into the realities of family relationships, friendship, and love lost and regained.