Showing results by author "Terry Pratchett" in All Categories

The Ankh-Morpork Post Office is running like...well, not at all like a government office. The mail is delivered promptly. Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig, former arch-swindler and confidence man, has exceeded all expectations - including his own. So it's somewhat disconcerting when Lord Vetinari summons Moist to the palace and asks, "Tell me, Mr. Lipwig, would you like to make some real money?"

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality. . . . Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

'Look after the dead,' said the priests, 'and the dead will look after you.' Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when, like Teppic, you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country rather earlier than expected, and your treasury is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. He'd had the best education money could buy of course, but unfortunately the syllabus at the Assassin's Guild in Ankh-Morpork did not cover running a kingdom and basic financial acumen....

By all rights, Arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig should be meeting his maker at the end of a noose. Instead, Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, has made him the city’s Postmaster General. Death may be preferable to fixing the Postal Service—a creaky, outdated institution beset by eccentric employees, mountains of old, undelivered mail Moist swears is talking to him, and a dangerous secret order. To restore the postal service to its former glory, Moist accepts the help of the tough talking and very attractive activist Adora Belle Dearheart.

The new Discworld novel, the 40th in the series, sees the Disc's first train come steaming into town. Change is afoot in Ankh-Morpork. Discworld's first steam engine has arrived, and once again Moist von Lipwig finds himself with a new and challenging job.

The second in beloved and bestselling fantasy grandmaster Sir Terry Pratchett's beloved Discworld novels starring the young witch Tiffany Aching. Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic—not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this. What Tiffany doesn't know is that an insidious, disembodied creature is pursuing her.

This is the worst thing you can wish on a citizen of Discworld. Especially for the magically challenged Rincewind, who has already had far too much excitement in his life. Unfortunately, the unlucky wizard always seems to end up in the middle of, well, absolutely everything. So when a request for a 'Great Wizzard' arrives from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's obviously Rincewind who's sent. For one thing, he's the only one who spells wizard that way.

Being 16 is always difficult, even more so when there's a Death in the family. After all, it's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe. Especially if he decides to take a well-earned moment to uncover the meaning of life and discover himself in the process, so that you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.

War has come to Discworld. The homes and businesses throughout the duchy of Borogravia limp along, doing the best they can without their men, sent to fight their age-old enemy. Polly has taken over the lion’s share of responsibility for the running of her family’s humble inn, The Duchess. Her beloved brother Paul marched off to war almost a year ago, but it has been more than two months since his last letter home, and the news from the front is bad: the fighting has reached the border, supplies are dwindling, and the brave Borogravians are losing precious ground.

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch will be damned if he lets anyone disturb his city's always tentative peace, and that includes a rabble-rousing dwarf from the sticks who's been stirring up trouble on the eve of the anniversary of one of Discworld's most infamous historical events.

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. You mess with it at your peril. You can let it move fast or slowly, but what you mustn't do is allow it to stop. The Monks of History have the glamorous job of time management in the Discworld. They store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater—how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd.

On Midsummer Night, dreams are especially powerful. So powerful, in fact, that they can cause the walls between realities to come crashing down. And some things you really don't want to break through.

The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork is facing a crisis, and who better to manage it than the man who turned around Ankh-Morpork’s inefficient Post Office, former arch-swindler-turned-Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig. Lord Vetinari once again makes Moist an offer he can’t refuse: resuscitate the venerable Royal Mint. The bank has many problems: the chief cashier is almost certainly a vampire, the elderly chairman and her two loaded crossbows needs a daily walkie, there’s something strange happening in the cellar, and running the Royal Mint is costing a mint.

Vampires have come to Lancre, but they're not what you'd expect. Sure, they drink blood and view humans as dinner, but they're modern and sophisticated. They've got style and fancy waistcoats. And they're not a bit afraid of garlic. The Magpyr family are out of the casket and want a bite of the future. But they haven't met the neighbours yet. Between them and Lancre stand a coven of four - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat and young Agnes - and they don't take kindly to murderous intruders....

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.

The Opera House in Ankh-Morpork is home to music, theatrics and a harmless masked Ghost who lurks behind the scenes. But now a set of mysterious backstage murders may just stop the show. Agnes Nitt has left her rural home of Lancre in the hopes of launching a successful singing career in the big city. The only problem is, she doesn't quite look the part. And there are two witches who would much rather she return home to join their coven.

A delightfully funny, fantastically inventive collection of twenty unearthed short stories by Sir Terry Pratchett, the award-winning and bestselling author and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld fantasy series. These rediscovered tales were written by Terry Pratchett under a pseudonym for British newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. The stories have never been attributed to him until now, and might never have been found—were it not for the efforts of a few dedicated fans.

Armed only with a frying pan and her common sense, Tiffany Aching, a young witch-to-be, is all that stands between the monsters of Fairyland and the warm, green Chalk country that is her home. Forced into Fairyland to seek her kidnapped brother, Tiffany allies herself with the Chalk's local Nac Mac Feegle, aka the Wee Free Men, a clan of sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men who are as fierce as they are funny.

All is not well within the Unseen University. The endemic politics of the place have ensured that it has finally got what it wished for: the most powerful wizard on the disc - which could mean that the death of all wizardry is at hand. And that the world is going to end, depending on whom you listen to. Unless, of course, one inept wizard can take the University's most precious artefact, the very embodiment of magic itself, and deliver it halfway across the disc to safety.

At long last, Lady Sybil has lured her husband, Sam Vimes, on a well-deserved and long-overdue holiday. But for the commander of the City Watch, a vacation in the country is anything but relaxing. The balls, the teas, the muck—not to mention all that fresh air and birdsong—are more than a bit taxing on a cynical city-born and -bred copper.