Vastralaya

Josh Brannock

Connor Harris

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

vanessa

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

The Fellowship was scattered. Some were bracing hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Some were contending with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam were left to take the accursed Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor–the dark Kingdom where Sauron was supreme. Their guide was Gollum, deceitful and lust-filled, slave to the corruption of the Ring. Thus continues the magnificent, bestselling tale of adventure begun in The Fellowship of the Ring, which reaches its soul-stirring climax in The Return of the King.

Set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary dynasties are controlled by noble houses that owe an allegiance to the imperial House Corrino, Dune tells the story of young Paul Atreides (the heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and heir of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the 'spice' melange, the most important and valuable substance in the cosmos. The story explores the complex, multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion as the forces of the empire confront each other for control of Arrakis.Published in 1965, it won the Hugo Award in 1966 and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is frequently cited as the world's best-selling sf novel.

Harry Potter's life is miserable. His parents are dead and he's stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he's a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.Though Harry's first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it's his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.

On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known. Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.--back cover

With the publication of On the Road in 1957, Jack Kerouac became at once the spokesman and hero of the Beat Generation. Along with such visionaries as William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac changed the face of American literature, igniting a counterculture revolution that even now, decades later, burns brighter than ever in Desolation Angels.In one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, finally hits the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest young stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie &amp; Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary writing.

Crows will fight over a dead man's flesh, and kill each other for his eyes.Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy-king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life.The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts.

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance—beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. As they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind.Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys’s claim to Westeros forever.Meanwhile, to the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone—a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice.From all corners, bitter conflicts reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all.

The authoritative version of the brilliant first novel by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A great novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried, in a completely revised translation that is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.In this new English-language version of Kundera's classic first novel, completely revised by the author to incorporate the most accurate portions of two previous translations plus his own corrections, the narrator Ludvik wonders, "What if History plays jokes?" This politically charged question, coupled with Ludvik's fate as an unintentional dissident, struck a chord in Czech readers; the novel's 1967 publication was a key literary event of the Prague Spring. Looking back on the tense, McCarthy-like atmosphere of the late 1940s, it chronicles the disastrous results of Ludvik's prankish postcard to a girlfriend criticizing the Czech communist regime. He is expelled from the Communist Party, forced to leave the university and join a special army unit with other enemies of the state. Years later, after he has resumed his studies and become a successful scientist, his lingering anger at the man who engineered his expulsion culminates in an act of destructive sexual revenge that serves only to show Ludvik he has never really understood any woman and is indeed the butt of one of history's many cruel jokes. The fresh descriptions and masterful employment of several narrators testify to Kundera's power as a novelist, unmistakable even in this early work.

A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, THE SILMARILLION is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before THE HOBBIT.Tolkien considered THE SILMARILLION his most important work, and, though it was published last and posthumously, this great collection of tales and legends clearly sets the stage for all his other writing. The story of the creation of the world and of the the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in THE LORD OF THE RINGS look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Feanor, most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Thereafter, the unsullied Light of Valinor lived on only in the Silmarils, but they were seized by Morgoth and set in his crown, which was guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth. THE SILMARILLION is the history of the rebellion of Feanor and his kindred against the gods, their exile from Valinor and return to Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all their heroism, against the great Enemy.This second edition features a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien describing his intentions for the book, which serves as a brilliant exposition of his conception of the earlier Ages of Middle-earth.

A virus has struck America and anyone with an IQ over 84 is in danger. People's heads are exploding. The country is on lockdown. Everything is about to change.  Luckily, the President of the United States is very much still alive (and most of Congress, too). They’ve decided to fix things.  Which brings us to David Dingle. He's the not-too-bright guy whom this whole story revolves around. A lot of people revolve around David Dingle. Some of them include a Las Vegas cocktail waitress, an ineffective jihadist, a Grand Dragon of the KKK, a creationist and his very extended family, a pill-popping doctor, a drop-dead sexy clepto-nympho-suicidal-maniac, and a rogue Illuminati mastermind to name just a few. All of them are eager to figure out why their heads aren't blowing up. Now David Dingle doesn't know much about these people, but frankly, he doesn't know much about much. He's just a simple American with a government job and a fantastic phone who one day finds himself at the epicenter of the biggest biological terrorist attack perpetrated on American soil. And now everyone's after him. Not cool. All the while, the President of the United States has to keep voters’ heads from blowing up before re-elections - things couldn’t get worse.  A timely satire that dives into the darkest corners of American Culture, IQ84 examines some of the most controversial issues in America today. It’s a book about freedom. 

When the war on terror became a war on journalists. »This book would not exist if things had not gone off the rails. On the night of 28 June 2011, we risked everything when, under cover of darkness, we slipped across the border between Somalia and Ethiopia. We wanted to investigate how relentless oil prospecting was affecting people in the closed-off and conflict-ridden region of Ogaden. Our goal was to go beyond the alarmist reports, or the descriptions provided by refugees to get at the truth using our own eyes and ears. Five days later we lay shot and bleeding in the desert sand. But in that very moment when the original assignment died, another story began. A story of legal tampering, propaganda, and geopolitical manoeuvring. After a Kafkaesque trial we were sentenced to eleven years in prison for terrorist offences. We were far from alone. Streams of journalists and ­politicians, as if on a conveyor belt, were being imprisoned for refusing to be at the beck and call of the dictatorship. Our investigation into oil had turned into a story about ink. Everyday life turned into a battle for survival in the notorious Kality Prison. On a cement floor under a corrugated iron roof in a world of deadly diseases, beatings and oppression we carved an existence based on rigid adherence to routine. Despite our shoe-laces and our freedom of speech being taken from us, we struggled to hold on to the most valuable thing in the world. The freedom to determine ones own identity.« /Martin Schibbye &amp; Johan Persson "438 Days" is one of the best-selling non-fiction books ever in Sweden, and is about to be turned into a motion picture. It has been unanimously hailed by critics as a »real page-turner«, »utterly outstanding« and »extremely well-written, captivating and fascinating«. Its authors have received numerous prizes, among them the Anna Politkovskaya Memorial Award and Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize.

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a tearaway and former reform school boy, on a series of journeys that takes them from New York to San Francisco, then south to Mexico. Hitching rides and boarding buses, they enter a world of hobos and drifters, fruit-pickers and migrant families, small towns and wide horizons. Adrift from conventional society, they experience America in the raw: a place where living is hard, but ‘life is holy and every moment is precious’.With its smoky, jazz-filled atmosphere and its restless, yearning spirit of adventure, On the Road left its mark on the culture of the late 20th century, influencing countless books, films and songs. Kerouac’s prose is remarkable both for its colloquial swing and for the pure lyricism inspired by the American landscape – ‘the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy’. This Folio Society edition is illustrated with evocative photographs of Kerouac and the landscapes of 1950s America. Now acknowledged as a modern classic, On the Road remains a thrilling and poignant story of the road less travelled.

Jack Kerouac, one of the great voices of the Beat generation and author of the classic On the Road, here continues his peregrinations in postwar, underground San Francisco. "The subterraneans" come alive at night, travel along dark alleyways, and live in a world filled with paint, poetry, music, smoke, and sex. Simmering in the center of it all is the brief affair between Leo Percepied, a writer, and Mardou Fox, a black woman ten years younger. Just at the moment when she is coolly leaving him, Leo realizes his passion for passion, his inability to function without it, and the puzzling futility of seeking redemption and fulfillment through writing.

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0618260269 (copyright page ISBN is 0618346252 - different from back cover)One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkeness bind themIn ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.--back cover

Alternate cover edition here.The Companions of the Ring have become involved in separate adventures as the quest continues. Aragorn, revealed as the hidden heir of the ancient Kings of the West, joined with the Riders of Rohan against the forces of Isengard, and took part in the desperate victory of the Hornburg. Merry and Pippin, captured by Orcs, escaped into Fangorn Forest and there encountered the Ents. Gandalf returned, miraculously, and defeated the evil wizard, Saruman. Meanwhile, Sam and Frodo progressed towards Mordor to destroy the Ring, accompanied by SmEagol--Gollum, still obsessed by his 'precious'. After a battle with the giant spider, Shelob, Sam left his master for dead; but Frodo is still alive--in the hands of the Orcs. And all the time the armies of the Dark Lord are massing. J.R.R. Tolkien's great work of imaginative fiction has been labeled both a heroic romance and a classic fantasy fiction. By turns comic and homely, epic and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scene and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail.

Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970's. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than just its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed and experienced.

This is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, mourner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him - he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife to his best friend - Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, revealing his wry perception of the world around him, and the innermost secrets of his heart.

This experimental film looks at the world and more specifically the effect man has had on the landscape and the environment. Without narration, the film shows the world in a pristine condition and untouched: blue skies, beautiful landscapes and endless vistas. The man-made world is much less appealing. Essentially a montage using a variety of film techniques to provide a visually stunning montage of images.

In this cinematic concert, mesmerizing images are plucked from everyday reality, then visually altered with state-of-the-art digital techniques. The result is a chronicle of the shift from a world organized by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic and the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope fuse in a tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique, artistic experience that reflects the vision of a brave new globalized world.

Notorious criminal Frank Griffin and his gang of outlaws are on a mission -- get revenge on Roy Goode, a former protege who betrayed the brotherhood. On the run, Roy seeks refuge in isolated mining town La Belle, N.M., where he lives with Alice Fletcher, a hardened widow and outcast. When word reaches La Belle, which is governed mainly by women, that Griffin is headed there, the residents of the town band together to defend against his murderous gang.

Season 1: In 1847-8, the crew of a real life Royal Naval expedition (later known as Franklin's expedition) led by three captains, Sir John Franklin, Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames, is sent to find the Arctic's fabled treacherous Northwest Passage but instead discovers a monstrous polar bear-like predator, a cunning and vicious Gothic horror that stalks the ships in a desperate game of survival. However, it soon becomes clear that that's just the beginning of their troubles. As things worsen and civilized behavior disintegrates in favor of survival at any cost, the crew must simultaneously battle the elements, the supernatural and eventually - themselves. The captains' only ally in all of this becomes a mute Inuit woman, who lives as an outcast from her tribe but still follows their old animistic religion. Season 2 (titled "Infamy") follows the inhabitants of the L.A. - based Terminal Island camp for Japanese Americans during WWII and a string of brutal deaths caused by a mysterious supernatural entity there.

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