The Colour of Magic: Graphic Novel


Scott Rockwell - 1992
    This is the first ever fully-illustrated version of the original Discworld novel.Rincewind the "Wizzard" lives in the city of fair Ankh-Morpork, a metropolis placed atop the Discworld, a flat earth being carried through space on the backs of four giant elephants, who in turn rest on the back of an even more gigantic celestial turtle, the Great A'Tuin. A failed mage, Rincewind only wants to have a peaceful and unexciting life. So it is extremely unfortunate for him when he runs into the Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower, come sightseeing to Ankh-Morpork from the fabled, and often believed to be mythical, Agatean Empire, accompanied by his homicidally sentient Luggage. As one of the few people able to communicate with Twoflower in a language the tourist understands, the extremely reluctant Rincewind finds himself forced to become Twoflower's guide by Ankh-Morpork's ruler, the Patrician, who fears the Agatean Emperor's wrath should something untoward befall a citizen of that empire within the bounds of crime-ridden Ankh-Morpork. Unfortunately for the city, Twoflower works in "inn sewers ants", and once he explains the concept of people agreeing to pay out if you make a bet with them that your business won't burn down, he inspires the first attempt at insurance fraud on the Disc.As a result, the unlikely companions are forced to flee the burning city, and venture into the wilds beyond. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire...

The Book of Awesome


Neil Pasricha - 2010
    With a 24/7 news cycle reporting that the polar ice caps are melting, hurricanes are swirling in the seas, wars are heating up around the world, and the job market is in a deep freeze, it's tempting to feel that the world is falling apart. But awesome things are all around us-sometimes we just need someone to point them out.The Book of Awesome reminds us that the best things in life are free (yes, your grandma was right). With laugh-out-loud observations from award- winning comedy writer Neil Pasricha, The Book of Awesome is filled with smile-inducing moments on every page that make you feel like a kid looking at the world for the first time. Read it and you'll remember all the things there are to feel good about. The Book of Awesome reminds us of all the little things that we often overlook but that make us smile. With touching, warm, and funny observations, each entry ends with the big booming feeling you'll get when you read through them: AWESOME!

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead


Max Brooks - 2003
    Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you?3. Use your head: cut off theirs.4. Blades don’t need reloading.5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Don’t be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset—life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen - Collection 4: Reaper's Gale, Toll The Hounds


Steven Erikson - 2009
    And the Edur fleet draws ever closer. Warriors, gods and wanderers converge. Soon there will be a reckoning - and it will be on an unimaginable scale...TOLL THE HOUNDSThe Lord of Death stands at the beginning of a conspiracy that will shake the cosmos, but at its end there waits another. For Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, has come to right an ancient and terrible wrong...

Starship Grifters


Robert Kroese - 2014
    But when he fleeces a wealthy weapons dealer in a high-stakes poker game, he ends up winning a worthless planet - and owing an outstanding debt more vast than space itself!The only way for Rex to escape a lifetime of torture on the prison world Gulagatraz is to score a big payday by pulling off his biggest scam. But getting mixed up in the struggle between the tyrannical Malarchian Empire and the plucky rebels of the Revolting Front - and trying to double-cross them both - may be his biggest mistake. Luckily for Rex, his frustrated but faithful robot sidekick has the cyber-smarts to deal with buxom bounty hunters, pudgy princesses, overbearing overlords, and interstellar evangelists - while still keeping Rex's martini glass filled.

The Wastelands (Dark Tower, #3)


Stephen King
    

The Complete Lythande


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 2013
    So what does one do in the intervening centuries? Lythande has to earn a living, after all. Music and magic are saleable skills—sometimes both together. There's a magic lute....The allure of a mermaid's song...a temperamental music-loving dragon...magical artifacts that will allow no one to turn them from their appointed destinations...an unexpectedly dangerous small child—Lythande's life is full of challenges, of which the biggest is never allowing the Secret that preserves each Adept’s power to be revealed, on pain of total loss of magic... oh, and death.

Doctor Who: The Silent Stars Go By


Dan Abnett - 2011
    With no help from other worlds, they subsist on the food they can grow and that's little enough. But their purpose, their whole life is to maintain the machines that will one day make their world as habitable as old Earth. Life used to be hard. Now as their crops fail, livestock sickens, and the temperature drops, it's becoming impossible. This year's Winter Season Feast won't be the usual celebration. It's not a time for optimism or hope - and it's not a time to welcome unexpected guests. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory find a society breaking apart under the strain. Tensions are mounting, old rivalries are coming to the fore, people are dying...and then the Doctor's old enemies, the Ice Warriors, make their move. With the cold-hearted threat of invasion, the real battle for survival begins. Or does it? The Doctor begins to suspect that behind everything lies a deadlier, and even more chilling danger...

Everything but the Squeal


John Scalzi - 2008
    if you’re one of the lucky few to live in the new, ecologically-minded city-states that dot the landscape. Outside their walls, in the “wilds” -- the rotting suburbs and exurbs of America -- things have become rather more precarious. Benjamin Washington is a kid in New St. Louis, who is on the verge of getting the boot into the wilds if he doesn’t take a job. In a last-ditch effort, he takes the only gig available to him: Biological Systems Interface Management... which is to say, he’s about to become a high-tech pig farmer. It’s a letdown for Benjamin, who has always expected better things for himself. But then comes the day when New St. Louis is under attack, from without and within. The only person standing between attackers and their goal is one young pig farmer, who never even wanted to be there... but who now has to make a choice whether to co-operate with the intruders, or make a stand for his city.

Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn?


John le Carré - 1967
    Then he receives a call from his estranged sister in East Germany, informing him of their father’s untimely death. His father’s last wish? To be buried in Lübeck. To carry out his father’s request, Dieter will have to drive the corpse back across the border, with risks he discovers only when he arrives in the East. A haunting story from the world’s most famous spy writer, John le Carré.Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn? was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, January 28, 1967.Cover design by Adil Dara.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1922
    What happens when a man lives his life backwards, or a family owns a diamond as big as the Ritz Hotel?How can a boring girl become more popular, a careless young woman become more sensible, or a cut-glass bowl destroy a married woman's life?What does a young man do to save the girl that he likes from an evil ghost, or to forget old feelings for a woman when she marries another man?Read this collection of short stories by one of America's finest storytellers to find out.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)


Dennis E. Taylor - 2016
    Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

Tears of the Anaren


C.W. Longbottom - 2021
    Longbottom, the Nebula Award-winning science-fiction and fantasy author and head writer of Mythic Quest. C.W. found literary fame with Inside the Caves of Beneroth and Tears of the Anaren, but even his most loyal fans don’t know that Tears of the Anaren began as a short story he wrote in the early 1970s while interning at Amazing Tales magazine.This never-before-published draft is now yours to discover, complete with C.W.’s (extremely) colorful commentary and an Introduction and Afterword by Ian Grimm, the iconoclastic creator of Mythic Quest. As sparks fly between heroic scoundrel Zeb and space seductress Merrith, we get a glimpse into the mind of a talented young man yearning for greatness. Like early Mozart, it is raw and green — but also magic.From Charlie Day, Megan Ganz, and Rob McElhenney, the Apple TV+ original comedy series, Mythic Quest, goes behind the scenes to follow the game’s creators. In a workplace focused on building worlds, molding heroes, and creating legends, the most hard-fought battles don’t occur in the game — they happen in the office. Rob McElhenney stars as Ian Grimm alongside Charlotte Nicdao and F. Murray Abraham.

You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News


Cracked.com - 2011
    Some facts are too terrifying to teach in school. Unfortunately, Cracked.com is more than happy to fill you in:* A zombie apocalypse? It could happen. 50% of humans are infected with a parasite that can take over your brain.* The FDA wouldn't let you eat bugs, right? Actually, you might want to put down those jelly beans. And that apple. And that strawberry yogurt.* Think dolphins are our friends? Then these sex-crazed thrill killers of the sea have you right where they want you.* The most important discovery in the history of genetics? Francis Crick came up with it while on LSD.* Think you're going to choose whether or not to buy this book? Scientists say your brain secretly makes all your decisions 10 seconds before you even know what they are.If you’re a fan of The Oatmeal or Frak.com and hate being wrong about stuff, you’ll love what you find in You Might Be a Zombie from the twisted minds at Cracked.

The Abominable Showman


Robert Rankin - 2014
    But the life of one Brentford schoolboy is turned upside down when he is sent on a mission by a Venusian he finds in his Daddy's allotment shed, and with Barry the Time Sprout lodged in his head to act as his guardian angel, the sky really is the limit.For the boy has to pose as the famous detective Lazlo Woodbine, and his travels will take him to an alternative future, where a vast pleasure palace space liner orbits the Earth, and where one Count Ilya Rostof is planning a celebration of Queen Victoria's ninetieth year on the throne. He will travel to the fabled Garden on Venus, and even to Heaven to meet with God - a rather nice man named Terrance. But even as these events are taking place, what of the nefarious schemes of Lord Willoughby Chase, of Professor Mandelbrot and the silly boys and their plans to fly a spacecraft into the Sun, and what of the etherial Poppett and the fabled vegetable lamb of Tartary? Never mind Lady Raygun and a group of fanatical space pirates ...A work of surreal brilliance from the mind of Robert Rankin, combining ecumenical ponderings with breathless space opera, and jaw dropping imagination.