But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind — strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos, with an eloquence, wit, and precision that makes for exhilarating reading.

    The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on Tolkien's creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume provides a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

    To compliment the original version, we've added new cover art! This manual is ideal for intermediate through advanced players,ages 10 and up."This is the original source used by Dungeon Masters and players to create challenges and combat scenarios"Within the covers of this book lurk the monsters that made the AD&D game famous. Elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, ghosts, and werewolves come to life as you read their detailed descriptions. In fact,each individual listing has all the necessary information to perform special attacks, defenses and magical resistance.No adventurer can be without it.

    

    A city of gas lamps, cobblestone streets, and horse-drawn carriages—and home to the controversial surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. The son of a grave robber, young Dr. Black studies at Philadelphia’s esteemed Academy of Medicine, where he develops an unconventional hypothesis: What if the world’s most celebrated mythological beasts—mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs—were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind?  The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from a childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, and the mysterious disappearance at the end of his life. The second book is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts—dragons, centaurs, Pegasus, Cerberus—all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations. You need only look at these images to realize they are the work of a madman. The Resurrectionist tells his story.

    In 1981, years before he sat down to tackle On Writing, Stephen King decided to address the topic of what makes horror horrifying and what makes terror terrifying. Here, in ten brilliantly written chapters, King delivers one colorful observation after another about the great stories, books, and films that comprise the horror genre—from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.With the insight and good humor his fans appreciated in On Writing, Danse Macabre is an enjoyably entertaining tour through Stephen King’s beloved world of horror.

    Brilliant burglars and easygoing farmers. Now The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings reveals the secrets of these two popular races - their culture, beliefs, and subraces (including two new subraces), as well as twenty-eight new character kits, from the gnome Goblinsticker to the halfling Forestwalker. If you enjoy playing gnome or halfling characters, or if you're a DM interested in creating an all-gnome or all-halfling campaign, this is the book for you!

    You're an adventurer: a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets. You seek gold and glory, winning it with sword and spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished. There are treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them.

    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.

    It took startling leaps of imagination as well as careful thought and planning to create places like these: places that readers and players want to come back to again and again.Now, eleven of adventure gaming's top designers come together to share their insights into building worlds that gamers will never forget. Learn the secrets of designing a pantheon, creating a setting that provokes conflict, determining which historical details are necessary, and so much more.Take that creative leap, and create dazzling worlds of your own!Essays by Wolfgang Baur, Keith Baker, Monte Cook, Jeff Grubb, Scott Hungerford, David "Zeb" Cook, Chris Pramas, Jonathan Roberts, Michael A. Stackpole, Steve Winter, with an introduction by Ken Scholes.

    The Steampunk Bible is the first compendium about the movement, tracing its roots in the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells through its most recent expression in movies such as Sherlock Holmes. Its adherents celebrate the inventor as an artist and hero, re-envisioning and crafting retro technologies including antiquated airships and robots. A burgeoning DIY community has brought a distinctive Victorian-fantasy style to their crafts and art. Steampunk evokes a sense of adventure and discovery, and embraces extinct technologies as a way of talking about the future. This ultimate manual will appeal to aficionados and novices alike as author Jeff VanderMeer takes the reader on a wild ride through the clockwork corridors of Steampunk history.Praise for The Steampunk Bible:"The Steampunk Bible is an informed, informative and beautifully illustrated survey of the subject." -The Financial Times"The Steampunk Bible is far and away the most intriguing catalog of all things steam yet written." -The Austin Chronicle “It’s hard to imagine how VanderMeer and Chambers could have put together a stronger collection. Its publication marks a significant, self-conscious moment in the history of the movement.”—PopMatters.com

    Told in the same fanciful, irreverent style as the Hitchhiker trilogy, with scraps of scripts, letters and comments from Adams, Don't Panic is the perfect companion to one of the most successful series in publishing history.

    This D&D supplement presents a fully illustrated hoard of new monsters, as well as ready-to-play variations of previously existing monsters. In addition, this supplement features maps of monster lairs, sample encounters, and tactics sections to help Dungeon Masters run the more complex creatures. Additionally, many entries contain information about where monsters are likely to appear in the Forgotten Realms and Eberron compaign settings.

    There will be more world information, tips on how to use the time-line and World Books, rewrites on O.C.C.s, and in some cases, expansions of and more details on O.C.C.s such as the Headhunter, Mercenaries, the Techno-Wizard and Shifter, as well as a few new O.C.C.s. Our goal is to make Rifts® more exciting and compelling than ever, while at the same time making the rules better organized, clearer and easier to use. The wonder and infinite possibilities of Rifts® all brought to pulse-pounding life like never before. Of course, there will be a few fun changes and additions, but nothing so dramatic as to make the 40+ available sourcebooks obsolete. Approximately 30 unique Occupational and Racial Character Classes, including Cyber-Knights, cyborgs, Glitter Boys, Psi-Stalkers, Dog Boys (mutant humanoid dogs), Juicers, Crazies, Techno-Wizards, Ley Line Walkers, Mystics, Shifters, Elemental Fusionists, Mind Melters, and many others. Supernatural and magical creatures, like dragons, available as player characters, others are horrifying menaces from the Rifts. Bionics and cybernetics offer a vast range of mechanical augmentation, meanwhile chemical enhancement (Juicers) and brain implants (Crazies) can turn a human into a superman, though with tragic results. Psychic powers are the source of the Burster, Mind Melter and Mystics abilities. Strange forms of magic are at the command of characters like the Ley Line Walker, Shifter, Elemental Fusionist, Rifter and Techno-Wizard (who combine magic and technology). Super-technology with Mega-DamageTM body armor, energy weapons, rail guns, power armor, and human augmentation. The Coalition States. Humankind's salvation, or its own worst nightmare? Character sheets. Color end sheets by John Zeleznik. New artwork and color pages throughout. Written and created by Kevin Siembieda.

    Whether you need dungeon vermin or a world-shaking personification of evil, the Tome of Beasts has it!This richly-illustrated, 400+ page supplement for any 5E game includes monsters from the entire history of Kobold Press, with longtime favorites such as clockwork creatures, drakes and dragons, devils and arch-devils, and dangerous flavors of the fey--illustrated by some of the finest artists working in fantasy today.These monsters have been designed so that GMs can use them in their favorite settings for fantasy adventure, whether it's Kobold Press's world of Midgard, one of the classic realms of d20-rolling gaming, or their own homebrew worlds.