Recommendations based on "Songs of the Dying Earth Stories in Honor of Jack Vance"

“Wistful, witty, and wise—and creepy. . . . Closer in tone to American Gods than to Coraline, but permeated with Bod’s innocence, this needs to be read by anyone who is or has ever been a child.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)By turns macabre, uplifting, sinister, and heartwarming, Neil Gaiman’s #1 national bestseller is an ingenious reimagining of Rudyard Kipling’s classic adventure The Jungle Book. Called a “novel of wonder . . . a tale of unforgettable enchantment” by the New York Times Book Review, The Graveyard Book will captivate readers of all ages with its timeless meditation on love, loss, survival, and sacrifice . . . and what it means to truly be alive.

Twenty-three years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father, John, set out to teach his boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America . . . and how to kill it.Fans of the blockbuster television phenomenon can rejoice! A one-of-a-kind compilation of all of Sam and Dean's demon-busting knowledge, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls contains illustrations and detailed descriptions that catalogue the more than two dozen otherworldly enemies that most people believe exist only in folklore, superstition, and nightmares: vampires, ghosts, revenants, reapers, and even bloody clowns. You'll find within these pages Sam and Dean's notes, observations, and memories interwoven with sections of John Winchester's invaluable journal, making this book the perfect companion to every thrilling episode—and an essential weapon in the secret war against the hidden creatures of the darkness!

The short fiction of a writer who helped to shape the course of American literature. With a determined commitment to the history of his native land, Nathaniel Hawthorne revealed, more incisively than any writer of his generation, the nature of a distinctly American consciousness. The pieces collected here deal with essentially American matters: the Puritan past, the Indians, the Revolution. But Hawthorne was highly - often wickedly - unorthodox in his account of life in early America, and his precisely constructed plots quickly engage the reader's imagination. Written in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s, these works are informed by themes that reappear in Hawthorne's longer works: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance. And, as Michael J. Colacurcio points out in his excellent introduction, they are themes that are now deeply embedded in the American literary tradition.

Brimming with tales of terror, suspense, and the uncanny, this work offers the first collection devoted to the Gothic genre. Each story contains the common elements of the gothic tale--a warped sense of time, a claustrophobic setting, a link to archaic modes of thought, and the impression of a descent into disintegration. Yet taken together, they reveal the progression of the genre from stories of feudal villains amid crumbling ruins to a greater level of sophistication in which writers brought the gothic tale out of its medieval setting, and placed it in the contemporary world. Bringing together the work of such writers as Eudora Welty, Thomas Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jorge Luis Borges, The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales presents a wide array of the sinister and unsettling for all lovers of ghost stories, fantasy, and horror.

Dorothy thinks she is lost forever when a terrifying tornado crashes through Kansas and whisks her and her dog, Toto, far away to the magical land of Oz. To get home Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City and find the wonderfully mysterious Wizard of Oz. Together with her companions the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion whom she meets on the way, Dorothy embarks on a strange and enchanting adventure. With a charming introduction by award-winning Cornelia Funke, The Wizard of Oz is one of the twenty wonderful classics being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2015.

L. M. Boston's thrilling and chilling tales of Green Knowe, a haunted manor deep in an overgrown garden in the English countryside, have been entertaining readers for half a century. Now the children of Green Knowe--both alive and ghostly--are back in appealing new editions.The spooky original illustrations have been retained, but dramatic new cover art by Brett Helquist (illustrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events) gives the books a fresh, timeless appeal for today's readers.

For more than sixty years, the imagination of Ray Bradbury has opened doors into remarkable places, ushering us across unexplored territories of the heart and mind while leading us inexorably toward a profound understanding of ourselves and the universe we inhabit. In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas. The stories within these pages were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining.

An outstanding array--52 pieces in all--of selected fiction from the multiple-award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, introduced with a foreword by Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James. A brilliant representation of Gaiman's groundbreaking, entrancing, endlessly imaginative fiction, this captivating volume includes nearly fifty of his short stories and excerpts from each of his five novels for adults--Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Impressive in its depth and range, The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction is both an entryway to Gaiman's oeuvre and a literary trove to which Gaiman readers old and new will return many times over.

The most significant translation in one hundred years of one of the greatest works of world literature   From Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, the stories of The Arabian Nights are timeless and unforgettable. Published here in three volumes, this magnificent new edition brings these tales to life for modern readers in the first complete English translation since Richard Burton’s of the 1880s.   Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, and the next morning puts her to death. To end this brutal pattern, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king enchanting tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, of the Angel of Death and magical spirits, and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps—a sequence of stories that will last 1,001 nights, and that will save her own life.

For fans of fairy tales and the literary supernatural: a unique collection of Russian short stories from the last 200 years   In these folk tales, young women go on long and perilous quests, wicked stepmothers turn children into geese, and tsars ask dangerous riddles, with help or hindrance from magical dolls, cannibal witches, talking skulls, stolen wives, and brothers disguised as wise birds. Some of the stories here were collected by folklorists during the last two centuries, while the others are reworkings of oral tales by four of the greatest writers in Russian literature: Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov, Andrey Platonov, and Alexander Pushkin, author of Eugene Onegin, the classic Russian novel in verse. Among the many classic stories included here are the tales of Baba Yaga, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Father Frost, and the Frog Princess. 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.