Classic Fantasy

The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm - that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict. Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon.

Where do you go when you die? If you guessed "a hellish videogame world where you're forced to fight for your life, solve puzzles, and sustain mortal injury only to be stitched back together to do it again", congratulations! Maybe that sounds kind of bad. But hear me out. Superpowers. Beautiful women at my side, some human and some decidedly not so much. And maybe, just maybe, if I survive long enough, I can find out what comes after the afterlife.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

A young woman accepts a position as nanny to the young daughter of a handsome, wealthy, and mysterious Chinese businessman - only to discover her new employer is really a god...and every foul demon in creation is out to destroy him! With a premise like that, fantasy aficionados and die-hard action lovers alike will no doubt be expecting something exceptional - and Australian author Kylie Chan delivers big time.

Steve likes to spend his mornings in the NCP village and trade his wheat for emeralds, armor, books, swords, and food. One morning, he finds that Zombies have attacked the villagers. The Zombies have also turned the village blacksmith into a Zombie, leaving Steve without a place to get swords. To protect himself and the few villagers that remain, Steve goes on a quest to mine for 40 diamonds, which are the most powerful mineral in the Overworld.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work.

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Gabriel was a successful magic student until a classmate framed him, forcing him to join the Adventurer’s Guild to survive. Unfortunately, his career as an adventurer doesn’t turn out quite how he was hoping. While on his first delve, he discovers more about monsters, dungeons, and souls than he ever imagined. With that knowledge comes power and new friends. But even as his exotic companions enrich his life, they also give him more to lose.

A game is only a game if you can quit. This is something I learned the hard way. I just wanted to let off some steam in virtual reality and ended up getting murdered and imprisoned in the body of one of the undead - slow, clumsy, and cursed to die at the hand of other players over and over again. The only way out of this awful predicament was to find the legendary Scroll of Rebirth, but the helpless plague-ridden corpse would need to be turned into a real killing machine. If only people knew what it was like to level up a dead rogue....

What happens when you suddenly find yourself in a reality of untold possibilities, in a place where technology and magic are indistinguishable? Every game location is a transformed physical world connected to others through an interstellar network of portals. Every player "avatar" is a living physical body with incredible survival traits. Once in this dreamscape, it would be unwise to not seize the moment! There are, however, a couple of catches.

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne’s masterpiece. “Wide-eyed mid-nineteenth-century humanistic optimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump” (Kirkus Reviews), here is the enthralling tale of five men and a dog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island of bewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive....

The Olympians appeared a decade ago, living incarnations of the ancient Greek gods on a mission to bring permanent order and stability to the world. Resistance has proved futile, and now humankind is under the jackboot of divine oppression. Until former London Police Officer Sam Akehurst receives an invitation too tempting to turn down: the chance to join a small band of guerrilla rebels armed with high-tech weapons and battlesuits. Calling themselves the Titans, they square off against the Olympians and their ferocious mythological monsters.

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

In the depths of the Sultan's cave, tenacious street thief Azar steals a bunch of jewels and a brass lamp. Sure, stealing has no honor, but she'll do whatever it takes to feed her brother, buy the medicine he needs, and get them out of the slums of Utaara. When Azar releases three gorgeous genies from the lamp, her first wish is to save her brother. Except the genies magic is weakened from being trapped for hundreds of years, and they must wait for their power to recover.

Elinor is an Extraordinary and the only one in England capable of wielding fire in over 100 years. As an Extraordinary she is respected and feared, but to her father she represents power and prestige for himself. Mr. Pembroke, having spent his life studying magic, is determined to control Elinor and her talent by forcing her to marry whom he chooses, a marriage that will produce even more powerful offspring.

After Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are whisked away from Kansas by a cyclone, they embark on a remarkable odyssey accompanied by the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion. As they travel through enchanted lands toward the Emerald City, they find perils and colorful opponents including the wonderfully evil Wicked Witch.

As an Agent of Death, Madeline Black is responsible for escorting the souls of the dearly departed to the afterlife. It's a 24/7 job with a lousy benefits package. Maddy's position may come with magical powers and an impressive wingspan, but it doesn't pay the bills. And then there are her infuriating boss, tenant woes, and a cranky, popcorn-loving gargoyle to contend with. Things start looking up, though, when tall, dark, and handsome Gabriel Angeloscuro agrees to rent the empty apartment in Maddy's building

Knowledge is power. That would be the motto of Lander University, had it not been snatched up and used to death by others long before the school was founded. For while Lander offers a full range of courses to nearly all students, it also offers a small number of specialty classes to a very select few. Lander is home to the Hero Certification Program, a curriculum designed to develop students with superhuman capabilities, commonly known as Supers, into official Heroes.

Enter the fantastical world of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy, one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Novelist C.S. Lewis called Peake's books "actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

Ever since he made his first appearance in A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has enthralled and delighted millions of fans throughout the world. Now Audible is proud to present Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, read by Stephen Fry. A lifelong fan of Doyle's detective fiction, Fry has narrated the definitive collection of Sherlock Holmes - four novels and four collections of short stories. And, exclusively for Audible, Stephen has written and narrated eight insightful introductions, one for each title.