Recommendations based on "The Talisman A Novel"

Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: “This sturdily textured debut novel never hesitates or meanders.”―Library Journal Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it.Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.

In this bestselling follow-up to The Dallergut Dream Department Store, beloved characters must visit a special dream-making district to unlock new secrets about the customers they lost and hope to bring back. It's been a year since Penny first walked through the doors of the Dallergut Dream Department Store, and surviving a year at the store means one thing… She is now an official employee of the dream industry! She can finally take the express commuter train to the Company District, where all the dream-production companies are located, and discover how all raw dream materials and testing equipment are produced. But the Company District is not quite what she expected. Instead it hides a secret underbelly of the magical industry that Penny thought she was a part of. Penny discovers the Civil Complaint Center, full of people filing complaints about their dreams. She also learns about the regular customers who have stopped coming to the store. As she gets to the bottom of each complaint, she begins to expand her horizons, moving beyond the role of dreamseller to understanding what lies in the hearts of their lost regulars. The Dallergut Dream-Making District delves deeper into the dream industry and its customers. Why do some of them buy a dream and never return? And can Penny and her colleagues bring their regulars back?

A stranger comes to the city of Mageia and challenges its inhabitants with a new kind of magic - a magic that restores innocence and faith.

The second book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly LinkHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. The Manticore—the second book in the series after Fifth Business—follows David Staunton, a man pleased with his success but haunted by his relationship with his larger-than-life father. As he seeks help through therapy, he encounters a wonderful cast of characters who help connect him to his past and the death of his father.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.

Artemis is no stranger to trouble. In fact he's a magnet for it. Now his mother is gravely ill. Artemis Fowl must travel back through time to steal the cure from the clutches of the young criminal mastermind ... Artemis Fowl. That's right, with fairy ally Captain Holly Short by his side, Artemis is going back in time to do battle with himself. Suggested level: intermediate, junior secondary.

Is Hitchcock a superficial, though brilliant, entertainer or a moralist? Do his films celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a new interpretation of the director's work, Richard Allen argues that Hitchcock orchestrates the narrative and stylistic idioms of popular cinema to at once celebrate and subvert the ideal of romance and to forge a distinctive worldview-the amoral outlook of the romantic ironist or aesthete. He describes in detail how Hitchcock's characteristic tone is achieved through a titillating combination of suspense and black humor that subverts the moral framework of the romantic thriller, and a meticulous approach to visual style that articulates the lure of human perversity even as the ideal of romance is being deliriously affirmed. Discussing more than thirty films from the director's English and American periods, Allen explores the filmmaker's adoption of the idioms of late romanticism, his orchestration of narrative point of view and suspense, and his distinctive visual strategies of aestheticism and expressionism and surrealism.

London, 1840: Wagner's latest opera plays to packed houses while disgruntled workers gather in crowded pubs to eat ice cream and plan the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the Pirate Captain finds himself incarcerated at Scotland Yard, in a case of mistaken identity.Discovering that his doppelgänger is none other than Karl Marx, the Captain and his crew are unwittingly caught up in a sinister plot that involves intellectual giants, enormous beards, and a quest to discover whether ham might really be the opium of the people.Includes, at no additional charge, The Wit and Wisdom of the Pirate Captain—a Major Philosophical Work.On the Matter of Love:If you're off to fight in a battle, snap a ship's biscuit in half and give your girlfriend the other half. When you meet again, they will match—like two halves of a single soul! Hopefully, this will stop her sleeping with other men.On Life in General:Life is like a big shanty. Everything will be fine so long as everyone sings in harmony. But if someone plays a duff note on the accordion or tries to break-dance at a sensitive bit, then there will be all sorts of trouble, mark my words.

As a result of an experiment with a chemistry set, three children smell very strongly of the food each detests the most--sauerkraut, corned beef and cabbage, and tomato soup--while the dog smells of apple pie.

As soon as he sees Trickster, the new horse at Quinn’s Stables, David knows he’s found the horse he was born to ride. But David’s got a reputation as a troublemaker . . . and Trickster’s still recuperating from an accident. David is determined to clear his name and prove to Mr. Quinn that he’s worth taking a chance on. Can he reach his goal?

“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.