Epic Classics

King Alban was a good king, ruling over Albanatolia with kindness, fairness, and above all, efficiency, thanks to the white magic. Everyone had enough to wear, enough to eat, enough to do, and had their washing done for free at the Palace, on Mondays from 10 to 4. One day, the king’s lavish and vain long-lost brother returned to the kingdom to bring a bit of colour to the realm with his own particular brand of magic, while stirring up discontent among the citizens, so that he might take the throne for himself.

Not since Terry Goodkind unsheathed the Sword of Truth has there been such an epic tale of heroism and magic that so captures the imagination as this monumental new work by a master storyteller. In The Fifth Sorceress, Robert Newcomb conjures a time and place wrought with exquisite detail, characters vividly drawn and deeply felt, and a history rich in glory and horror, splendor and secrets.

As a young woman, Jendara left the cold northern isles of the Ironbound Archipelago to find her fortune. Now, many years later, she's forsaken her buccaneer ways and returned home in search of a simpler life, where she can raise her young son, Kran, in peace. When a strange clan of shapeshifting raiders pillages her home, however, there's no choice for Jendara but to take up her axes once again to help the islanders defend all that they hold dear.

Lens of the World is the story of a prodigious life. It recounts the coming of age of Nazhuret, an outcast and orphan who rises from his lowly estate as a ward of the Sordaling military school to become a mighty warrior, philosopher, and confidant of the King of Vestinglon. As he grows, the young man receives outlandish knowledge and is prepared for an entirely exceptional destiny far beyond the narrow confines of his kingdom.

Torius Vin is perfectly happy with his life as a pirate captain, sailing the Inner Sea in search of plunder with a bold crew of buccaneers and Celeste, his snake-bodied navigator and one true love. Yet when he's invited into a network of spies working against the slave trade, can Torius continue to choose the path of piracy? Or will he sign on as an abolitionist privateer, bringing freedom to others at the price of his own?

Rhiow, Urruah, and Arhu, the wizard cats who saved New York City in "The Book of Night with Moon", are summoned to London to deal with a crisis which affects the very fabric of time.

The Citadel of Wizards was under siege. Deep in the Vaults beneath the walled city, gates into inhuman realities were opening and closing without warning. Monsters emerged from other dimensions; and ancient, malign magics came to life under the influence of cosmic chaos. Someone was tampering with the Void. The Council of Wizards blamed Antryg Windrose, the rebel mage who had fled their justice to find haven in the City of Angels.

Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins - the Pandavas and the Kouravas - but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.

Dylan thought he was an average man with a dead-end job and no great aspirations. When he finds a black book lying innocently on his lawn with peculiar words and markings, he discovers the universe is bigger than he imagined. The guardian of Earth, who kept the book and its immense power safe from falling into the wrong hands, was killed. Now Earth needs a new guardian.

Pizza, coffee, and a library full of unplayed games. That's the plan, or at least it was supposed to be. Instead, an average gamer finds himself seemingly transported into the world of his favorite game. While some might appreciate that, it's quickly apparent that he isn't in some sort of virtual reality experiment, all of his downloaded mods are active, and the world is likely set to its highest difficulty with permadeath enabled.

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.

Mirian Raas comes from a long line of salvagers, adventurers who use magic to dive for sunken ships off the coast of tropical Sargava. When her father dies, Mirian has to take over his last job: a dangerous expedition into deep jungle pools, helping a tribe of lizardfolk reclaim the lost treasures of their people.

Warning: Contains intense action, adult situations, threesomes, and untraditional relationships. After slaying a leviathan of the deep, and gaining a magic he barely understands, an ordinary fisherman finds himself entangled in a magical game of the gods with the fate of his planet as the prize. Dean becomes Oakley's champion, competing in the Minotaur's Maze. He travels through a portal to Mixonia, a city of wonders, filled with magic and monster girls of all sorts.

Odysseus has been away from Ithaca, the Greek city-state under his rule, for ten years while fighting in the Trojan War. After the fall of Troy, Odysseus begins the long journey home to his wife and son; however, his journey is plagued by misfortune as the gods feud over his fate, leaving the Ithacans to believe that he has died. In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

"My name is Raine Benares—and it sucks to be me right now. I’m a seeker who found the Saghred, a soul-stealing stone that gave me unlimited powers I never wanted. Now I’ve lost the rock—and the magic it gave me—to a goblin dark mage whose main goals are my death and world domination. This is more than incentive enough for a little trip to the goblin capital of Regor with a small band of good friends, not-so-good friends, and one outright enemy.... Don’t ask."

Acharsis has always loved long shots. But even with a perfect scheme and a handpicked squad of godsblooded grifters and fighters, breaking into the undead lord's Akkodaisis' ziggurat is suicidally impossible. Good thing Archarsis is a fallen demigod with more than one trick up his sleeve....

The Iliad - attributed to Homer - is the most famous ancient Greek epic poem. It recounts the struggle between King Agamemnon and the hero Achilles during the final months of the Trojan War, with frequent detours into earlier legends and myths. In its portrayal of battle scenes and the constant interventions of the gods, The Iliad explores themes of wrath, glory, and fate, and has provided the subject matter for many later Greek, Roman, and Renaissance writings.

Having two of his fingers cut off at an early age hadn't done much to make Xandrith an agreeable fellow. Besides marking him as a pariah and having him shunned by even his own family, it had also hurt. A lot. Being stripped of a few of his fingers and cast out of the Order of Mages had left him bitter and angry, but if there was any consolation to be had it was that he was doing rather well in his new line of work. While perforating people for money might not have been the most noble of callings, it was quite lucrative. Well, it had been quite lucrative.

Paradise Lost is considered to be the best epic poem in the English language, as John Milton seeks to "justify the ways of God to men" through relating the story of Satan's rebellion in Heaven, the deception and fall of Man, and the presaged event of Redemption through Jesus, the Son of God...the "Second Adam."

With the help of Krosp, Emperor of All Cats, Agatha has escaped from the massive airship known as Castle Wulfenbach. After crashing their escape dirigible, Agatha and Krosp fall in with Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure, a traveling troupe of performers dedicated to staging Heterodyne shows - dramatizations of the exploits of Bill and Barry Heterodyne and their allies - who are unaware of Agatha’s connection to the Heterodyne line.