Recommendations based on "Mr Penguin and the Tomb of Doom Book 4"

A literary masterpiece by a Polish traveller, aristocratic adventurer, political activist, ethnographer and publisherAlphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which tales of characters transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories, which, like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, provides entertainment on an epic scale.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Felix, a Jewish boy in Poland in 1942, is hiding from the Nazis in a Catholic orphanage. The only problem is that he doesn't know anything about the war, and thinks he's only in the orphanage while his parents travel and try to salvage their bookselling business. And when he thinks his parents are in danger, Felix sets off to warn them--straight into the heart of Nazi-occupied Poland. To Felix, everything is a story: Why did he get a whole carrot in his soup? It must be sign that his parents are coming to get him. Why are the Nazis burning books? They must be foreign librarians sent to clean out the orphanage's outdated library. But as Felix's journey gets increasingly dangerous, he begins to see horrors that not even stories can explain.Despite his grim suroundings, Felix never loses hope. Morris Gleitzman takes a painful subject and expertly turns it into a story filled with love, friendship, and even humor.

In the unforgettable sequel to the bestselling Jonathan Livingston Seagull, two barn-storming vagabonds meet in the fields of Midwest America and embark on an entertaining and sometimes startling mystical adventure that presents a new perspective on reality, miracles, and the way many of us could live—if we’re up for the challenge. In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders . . . until he meets Donald Shimoda—former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard’s imagination soar. . . . In Illusions, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don’t need airplanes to soar . . . that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them . . . and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places—like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.

Brian Attebery's "strategy of fantasy" include not only the writer's strategies for inventing believable impossibiltes, but also the reader's strategies for enjoying, challenging, and conspiring with the text. Drawing on a number of current literary theories (but avoiding most of their jargon), Attebery makes a case for fantasy as a significant movement within postmodern literature rather than as a simple exercise of nostalgia. Attebury examines recent and classic fantasies by Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, and Gene Wolfe, among others. In both its popular and postmodern incarnations, fantasic fiction exhibits a remarkable capacity for reinventing narrative concentions. Attebery shows how plots, characters, settings, storytelling frameworks, gender divisions, and references to cultural texts such as history and science are all called into question the moment the marvelous is admited into a story.

"Hog" Coolidge, an otherworldly actor, sends Sherwood into the past to investigate the history of his small Montana town, once visited by extraterrestrials and now suffering a strange malaise. By the author of Imajica. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock -- the family of tiny Borrowers -- think they have at last found an ideal home. They've moved into a house in a miniature village built as a hobby by a retired railroad man. The village is the perfect size for the Borrowers, and after the hardships they've faced, the Clocks gratefully settle into the luxury of having a "proper" house. The easy life makes them careless. Or, rather, it makes Arrietty careless. She befriends a "human bean," and the next thing Arrietty knows, she and her family have been kidnapped. Their captors are a greedy married couple, called the Platters, who have big plans for the little people. They have created their own miniature village in a glass case and plan to imprison the Borrowers within -- like animals in a zoo -- for the rest of their lives.

Tolly comes to live with his great-grandmother at the ancient house of Green Knowe and becomes friends with three children who lived there in the seventeenth century. "L.M. Boston's classic is a sophisticated mood piece disguised as a children's ghost story. As young Toseland goes to live with his grandmother in the family's ancestral home, the reader is plunged immediately into the world of Green Knowe. Like Toseland, who actually rows up to his new home in the midst of a flood, we have a hard time finding our bearings. Toseland discovers a funny kind of grandmother awaiting him--one who speaks elliptically of the children and animals she keeps around the house: they might be memories, they might be ghosts. It's never quite clear where real life leaves off and magic begins. Toseland admires a deer: "A deer seems more magic than a horse." His grandmother is quick to respond: "Very beautiful fairy-tale magic, but a horse that thinks the same thoughts that you do is like strong magic wine, a love philtre for boys. With this meshing of the magical and the real, Boston evokes a childlike world of wonder. She compounds the effect by combining gorgeous images and eerily evocative writing. Toseland goes out on a snowy morning: "In front of him, the world was an unbroken dazzling cloud of crystal stars, except for the moat, which looked like a strip of night that had somehow sinned and had no stars in it." The loosely plotted story is given more resonance still through liberal use of biblical imagery and Anglo-Saxon mythology. For those willing to suspend their disbelief and read carefully, the world of Green Knowe offers a wondrous escape." Source: www.amazon.com.

The second short story set in Peter Newman’s incredible world of THE VAGRANT. 'It's a story that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and refused to let go...' Fantasy Faction

A boy who can recall his past life. A hint of hidden treasure. An adventure in the desert of Rajasthan In one of their most hair-raising escapades ever, Feluda and Topshe set out for Rajasthan on the trail of the parapsychologist Dr Hajra and Mukul, a boy who claims he remembers his previous life. On the way they meet Jatayu, an author of popular crime thrillers, who decides to accompany them. After numerous adventures, including an impromptu camel ride across the desert, they reach Mukul's Golden Fortress, where Feluda unravels the many strands of a complex case.

“Only a fool would pass this one up.” —Laurie R. King In 1205, Theophilos—a fool by trade, a family man by choice, and a spy by design—belongs, along with his family, to the Fools’ Guild, a group that secretly maintains the fragile order of society. In Toulouse, that order is threatened when, unexpectedly, a man claiming to be a full brother of the ruling count is found one morning in a local bordello next to a dead whore, killed with his own sword. Now, Theophilos and his family must uncover the truth.