Octopus and the Vulture! Guest-starring Dominic Fortune and the New Mutants! Collecting WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (1985) #1-18 and ANNUAL #1-2, and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) #268.

    This collection takes on a life of its own, ending with the story “The Dark Ages”–taking place post-war–but if the Fables knew the consequences, they might not have gone to war at all. Collects Fables #42-81 and Peter & Max: A Fables Novel HC.

    A publishing phenomenon that has given rise to a new genre: the landscape novel that has sold over six million copies.

     Captain Carl Ramsey and the crew of the Mobius are constantly on the run from one bad decision to the next. Every time it looks like they might score big, something goes wrong. But no one ever got ahead by quitting, and the only alternative is honest work. There are always more jobs to pull, more schemes to hatch, and more authorities to evade. Mission 5: Alien Racer A race contest turns into a heist when Carl can’t keep his greed in check. But will he be able to pull it off with billions of holovid viewers watching? Mission 6: Retro Version A relaxing getaway on a nostalgic colony sounds like a nice break for the Mobius crew. But easy living and keeping a low profile aren’t in their DNA. Mission 7: Siege of Mortania Mort’s past catches up with him, and the crew of the Mobius are caught in the wizardly crossfire. Mission 8: Moon of Odysseus One of Carl’s old squadron mates has stumbled onto the location of a salvage prize unlike any the Mobius crew has ever seen: a lost Earth Navy battleship. The only problem is the survivors of the crash aren’t too welcoming of visitors. Bonus Short Story: Pinball Wizardry For Esper Theresa Richelieu, it’s time to graduate from apprentice to wizard. But the final exam isn’t exactly what she had in mind.

    Le Guin has produced a body of work that testifies to her abiding faith in the power and art of words. She is perhaps best known for imagining future intergalactic worlds in brilliant books that challenge our ideas of what is natural and inevitable in human relations—and that celebrate courage, endurance, risk-taking, and above all, freedom in the face of the psychological and social forces that lead to authoritarianism and fanaticism. It is less well known that she first developed these themes in the richly imagined historical fiction collected in this volume, which inaugurates the Library of America edition of her works.The Complete Orsinia gathers for the first time the entire body of work set in the imaginary central European nation of Orsinia: the early novel Malafrena, begun in the 1950s but not published until 1979, the related stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976), and additional stories and songs. In a new introduction written for this volume, Le Guin describes the breakthrough that led to her first novel: “Most of what I read drew me to write about Europe; but I knew it was foolhardy to write fiction set in Europe if I’d never been there. At last it occurred to me that I might get away with it by writing about a part of Europe where nobody had been but me.” So Orsinia was established, a country, like its near neighbors Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, with a long and vivid history of oppression, art, and revolution.An epic meditation on the meaning of hope and freedom, love and duty, Malafrena takes place from 1825 to 1830, when Orsinia is a part of the Austrian empire. Itale Sorde, the idealistic heir to Val Malafrena, an estate in the rural western provinces, leaves home against his father’s wishes to work as a journalist in the cosmopolitan capital city of Krasnoy, where he plays an integral part in the revolutionary politics that are roiling Europe.Thirteen additional stories trace the history of Orsinia from the twelfth century, when it first emerges as an independent kingdom, to 1989, when its repressive Stalinist government falls in an Orsinian Velvet Revolution. The poem “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” Le Guin’s first published work, joins two never before published songs in the Orsinian language.The volume also features a newly researched chronology of Le Guin’s life and career, and detailed notes. The beautiful full-color endpaper map of Orsinia is drawn by Le Guin herself.

    Chaos rules the final days of the Forerunner empire. The Flood—a horrifying, shape-changing, and unstoppable parasite—has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies, and internal strife has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses. Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Forerunners known as the Ur-Didact and the Librarian reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished race of the Precursors and the Flood. While the Precursors created many technological species, including those of the Forerunners and humanity itself, the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy ten million years before. Because of that savagery, a greater evil looms. Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian—husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict—hold the keys to a solution. As they face the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time—a shocking act designed to prevent an insane abomination from dominating the entire galaxy…

    until the day the spider appears. What looks like an ordinary arachnid turns out to be Anansi, the trickster god of African legend, and its arrival throws Dion’s existence into chaos. Dion’s already impressive legal brain is sharpened. He becomes nimbler-witted and more ruthless, able to manipulate and deceive like never before, both in and out of court. He has been transformed into Anansi’s avatar on earth.Then he discovers the price he has to pay for his new-found skills: he must travel to America and take part in a contest between avatars of all the other trickster gods. It’s a life-or-death battle of wits, full of skulduggery and double-cross. At the end, only one will be left standing.

    From the twin assassins, Bannon and Vree, to the bard sent on a seemingly impossible mission, these magical characters take readers on adventures they'll never forget.

    This is The Warrior Chronicles books 1-3.The beginning of the tale of Uhtred. Uhtred is born into the aristocracy of 9th Century Northumbria, but orphaned at ten, adopted by a Dane and taught the Viking ways. Yet Uhtred’s fate is indissolubly bound up with Alfred, King of Wessex, who rules over the last English kingdom when the Danes have overrun Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. So ends The Last Kingdom.The Pale Horseman takes place right afterwards in the fateful year in which the Danes capture Alfred’s kingdom and drive him as a fugitive into the marshes of Athelney. It seems that Wessex, and England, are destroyed, but Alfred is determined to make one desperate gamble that might save his kingdom.The Lords of the North sees Uhtred, having helped Alfred secure Wessex an independent Saxon kingdom, returns north to find his stepsister. Instead he discovers chaos, civil war and treachery in Northumbria. He takes the side of Guthred, once a slave and now a man who would be king, and in return expects Guthred’s help in capturing Dunholm, the lair of the dark Viking lord, Kjartan.

     Revel in Catching Midnight, then experience Luisa's Desire. Catching Midnight: They are the upyr, part wolves, part blood-drinking immortals. During the plague, they rescue an orphan and carry her into the Scottish wood to live as one of them. Blossoming, Gillian revels in the pleasures of the flesh and the hunt, but her heart yearns for the human world. Taking a falcon's form, Gillian escapes her keepers-only to be caught by Aimery Fitz Clare, a mortal nobleman. He could be the savior she's looking for...unless she loses her heart to him. Luisa's Desire tells of a child of midnight who has arrived at a spiritual refuge in Tibet. Far from her normal immortal life, Luisa is surrounded by simplicity and self-denial. Here, she hopes to expunge her dangerous desires. But when she meets the monk who can save her, Luisa realizes she's only beginning to understand what desire is.

    And the last and most amazing volume in the legendary Belgariad series: the story of the queen of truth, love, rage and destiny, Polgara the Sorceress.Here is the full epic story of Belgarath, the great sorcerer learned in the Will and the Word on whom the fate of the world depends. Only Belgarath can tell of those near-forgotten times when Gods still walked the land: he is the Ancient One, the Old Wolf, his God Aldur's first and most-favoured disciple. Using powers learned over the centuries Belgarath himself records the story of conflict between two mortally opposed Destinies that split the world asunder.In the story of Polgara, a beautiful woman whose constancy and inner power have been the foundation of all the luck and love that have saved the world, the full truth of The Belgariad is revealed.Hugely entertaining works of great daring, wit, grandeur and excitement which confirm the role of Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress as the mightiest fantasy creations of the century.

    Spurned by his former brothers and his father Magnus the Red, Ahriman is a wanderer, a sorcerer of Tzeentch whose actions condemned an entire Legion to an eternity of damnation. Once a vaunted servant of the Thousand Sons, he is now an outcast, a renegade who resides in the Eye of Terror. Ever scheming, he plots his return to power and the destruction of his enemies, an architect of fate and master of the warp.

    After creating her latest masterpiece, Ellie's entire world is flipped upside down. What caused her to paint the bloodied stranger? Ellie didn’t know, but days later a woman of the painting’s exact likeness is found dead. Obsessed with finding answers, Ellie quickly becomes the next target of a mysterious killer hunting artists throughout the city of Northampton, Massachusetts. The Secret Letter A mysterious chain letter is only the beginning to an inescapable nightmare. Homicide Detective Michael Dobson has seen many things in his long years on the force, but nothing can prepare him for a series of murders linked through the same mysterious chain letter mailed to the victims before their untimely demise. The answers lie in the victims’ pasts, leading Dobson and his rookie partner on a serpentine quest through the dark recesses of vengeance and betrayal. Can he stop the killer in time, or will a brutal fate await all who have made the killer’s list?

    He doesn't know the burly policeman with the wild story who has approached him. Or the strangely intense man who sits in the rear seat of the patrol car, his eyes flashing green. But all that is about to change. Matt Murdock is beginning to remember. In a colorless world without heroes, the spark of light must come from the dark. Together, these individuals face a mystery that can only be unraveled...a threat that can only be challenged...by Knights.

    Illustrations.