Jack Of Shadows

In a world half of light, half of darkness, where science and magic strive for dominance, there dwells a magical being who is friendly with neither side. Jack, of the realm of shadows, is a thief who is unjustly punished. So he embarks on a vendetta. He wanders through strange realms, encountering witches, vampires, and, finally, his worst enemy: the Lord of Bats. He consults his friend Morningstar, a great dark angel. He is pursued by a monstrous creature called the Borshin. But to reveal any more would be to spoil some of the mindboggling surprises Jack of Shadows has in store. First published in 1971 and long out-of-print, Jack of Shadows is one of fantasy master Roger Zelazny's most profound and mysterious books.

The Earth no longer rotates. Science rules the dayside of the globe. Magic rules the World of Night, and Jack of Shadows, Shadowjack the Thief, who broke the Compact and duped the Lord of High Dudgeon, walks in silence and in shadows to seek vengeance upon his enemies.

Sixteen-year-old Jack thinks he’s a failure. Living with aches and nausea, hearing voices and disconnected from his friends, he wonders if crystal meth might take the pain away. But when his mother ends up in a coma, and his father can’t cope, Jack runs from home with his younger sister Emily. As the siblings shelter from a violent storm, goddess Freyja appears. She says they must travel to the realm of Sylvaheim to defeat the malevolent Lord Batu Glass and his partner Morgana. Growing in power, they now threaten all the realms. But the ultimate challenge lies within: Can Jack and Emily conquer their deepest fears to stop druglord Batu Glass and his henchmen, the traitorous ravens, before Jack’s soul is lost too? Shadows of Sylvaheim is not just a coming-of-age mythic fantasy novel, it also acts as a Jungian guide to life. “It is a worthy undertaking to introduce young people to Jungian psychology and I applaud Toula’s efforts and dedication. I wish her great success!” Dr Murray Stein ~ Jungian Analyst, Author, Lecturer

“Kingdom of Shadows must be called a spy novel, but it transcends genre, as did some Graham Greene and Eric Ambler classics.”—The Washington Post Paris, 1938. As Europe edges toward war, Nicholas Morath, an urbane former cavalry officer, spends his days working at the small advertising agency he owns and his nights in the bohemian circles of his Argentine mistress. But Morath has been recruited by his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, a diplomat in the Hungarian legation, for operations against Hitler’s Germany. It is Morath who does Polanyi’s clandestine work, moving between the beach cafés of Juan-les-Pins and the forests of Ruthenia, from Czech fortresses in the Sudetenland to the private gardens of the déclassé royalty in Budapest. The web Polanyi spins for Morath is deep and complex and pits him against German intelligence officers, NKVD renegades, and Croat assassins in a shadow war of treachery and uncertain loyalties, a war that Hungary cannot afford to lose. Alan Furst is frequently compared with Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John le Carré, but Kingdom of Shadows is distinctive and entirely original. It is Furst at his very best. Praise for Kingdom of Shadows “Kingdom of Shadows offers a realm of glamour and peril that are seamlessly intertwined and seem to arise effortlessly from the author’s consciousness.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Subtly spun, sensitive to nuances, generous with contemporary detail and information discreetly conveyed. . . . It’s hard to overestimate Kingdom of Shadows.”—Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times “A triumph: evocative, heartfelt, knowing and witty.”—Robert J. Hughes, The Wall Street Journal “Imagine discovering an unscreened espionage thriller from the late 1930s, a classic black- and- white movie that captures the murky allegiances and moral ambiguity of Europe on the brink of war. . . . Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time, but Furst comes closer than anyone has in years.”—Walter Shapiro, Time

Only in the world of the theater can Nat Field find an escape from the tragedies that have shadowed his young life. So he is thrilled when he is chosen to join an American drama troupe traveling to London to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream in a new replica of the famous Globe theater. Shortly after arriving in England, Nat goes to bed ill and awakens transported back in time four hundred years -- to another London, and another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Amid the bustle and excitement of an Elizabethan theatrical production, Nat finds the warm, nurturing father figure missing from his life -- in none other than William Shakespeare himself. Does Nat have to remain trapped in the past forever, or give up the friendship he's so longed for in his own time?

Percy Jackson meets Indiana Jones in the New York Times bestselling epic adventure Seven Wonders! The Tomb of Shadows is the third book in a seven-book series by master storyteller Peter Lerangis. This sequel to the bestselling Lost in Babylon and The Colossus Rises chronicles the adventures of Jack McKinley and his friends in a life-or-death race to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. In the rubble of this Wonder of the Ancient World, they have to face down their own demons and engage in an epic battle with foes long gone. But when promises are broken, blood is spilled—and the Select are left with no choice but to destroy the one thing that might have saved them all. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, praised Seven Wonders Book 1: The Colossus Rises as "a high-octane mix of modern adventure and ancient secrets. Young readers will love this story. I can't wait to see what's next in the Seven Wonders series!"

Midwinter has been replaced by a Cold War in the world of Faerie, and this new kind of war requires a new kind of warrior. Queen Titania reconstitutes a secret division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dubbed the "Office of Shadow," imbuing it with powers and discretion once considered unthinkable. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Steel and sorcery clash as the Harhn incursion sweeps through the Hugue. Mankind faces its greatest peril without the Order Knights of legend to defend them. Crusading deep in the frontier, the Order is unaware of the savage beasts threatening their homeland as the Hugue realms muster their armies for war. Between a cunning Harhn sorcerer, and an alliance forged with the decadent Darkfey, the horde threatens to extinguish the domains of men. Only Lord Baudouin and Lady Lucia, a Dragon Maiden from the Order, stand in the enemy's path. One must find the strength to unify the realms. The other must discover the strength within her, while coming to terms with the agendas of her Order. But only together will there be any hope to repel the onslaught, and preserve the future for a mysterious girl they do not know. Jack Whitsel is a native Californian, but has made Oregon his home since 1982. His favorite genres are fantasy and historical fiction. Shadows of Kings, the first novel of the Dragon Rising Series is the love child born of these two passions. "I love the elements of fantasy when mixed with the gritty aspects of a medieval society."

A New York Times Bestseller In an ancient churchyard just outside Paris, archeologists uncover an ancient tomb -- certain they have stumbled onto the find of the century. But something goes very wrong as the tomb is opened. Something too frightening to imagine . . . and too terrible to utter. For American visitor Tara Mason, the romantic city of her dreams has suddenly turned sinister. For she has heard the blood-curdling screams in the churchyard -- and knows that she must run away -- from the powerful stranger chasing after her . . . and from a legendary, sensual predator who stalks the night. At the country estate where she has sought refuge, the shadowy man reappears. He calls himself a guardian, sworn to protect the innocent from an evil most never see. And Tara will have to trust him, because that evil has seen her . . . and won't stop until it claims her, body and soul.

On a sunny fall afternoon in 1988, Jon Sarkin was playing golf when, without a whisper of warning, his life changed forever. As he bent down to pick up his golf ball, something strange and massive happened inside his head; part of his brain seemed to unhinge, to split apart and float away. For an utterly inexplicable reason, a tiny blood vessel, thin as a thread, deep inside the folds of his gray matter had suddenly shifted ever so slightly, rubbing up against his acoustic nerve. Any noise now caused him excruciating pain. After months of seeking treatment to no avail, in desperation Sarkin resorted to radical deep-brain surgery, which seemed to go well until during recovery his brain began to bleed and he suffered a major stroke. When he awoke, he was a different man. Before the stroke, he was a calm, disciplined chiropractor, a happily married husband and father of a newborn son. Now he was transformed into a volatile and wildly exuberant obsessive, seized by a manic desire to create art, devoting virtually all his waking hours to furiously drawing, painting, and writing poems and letters to himself, strangely detached from his wife and child, and unable to return to his normal working life. His sense of self had been shattered, his intellect intact but his way of being drastically altered. His art became a relentless quest for the right words and pictures to unlock the secrets of how to live this strange new life. And what was even stranger was that he remembered his former self. In a beautifully crafted narrative, award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Ellis Nutt interweaves Sarkin’s remarkable story with a fascinating tour of the history of and latest findings in neuroscience and evolution that illuminate how the brain produces, from its web of billions of neurons and chaos of liquid electrical pulses, the richness of human experience that makes us who we are. Nutt brings vividly to life pivotal moments of discovery in neuroscience, from the shocking “rebirth” of a young girl hanged in 1650 to the first autopsy of an autistic savant’s brain, and the extraordinary true stories of people whose personalities and cognitive abilities were dramatically altered by brain trauma, often in shocking ways. Probing recent revelations about the workings of creativity in the brain and the role of art in the evolution of human intelligence, she reveals how Jon Sarkin’s obsessive need to create mirrors the earliest function of art in the brain. Introducing major findings about how our sense of self transcends the bounds of our own bodies, she explores how it is that the brain generates an individual “self” and how, if damage to our brains can so alter who we are, we can nonetheless be said to have a soul. For Jon Sarkin, with his personality and sense of self permanently altered, making art became his bridge back to life, a means of reassembling from the shards of his former self a new man who could rejoin his family and fashion a viable life. He is now an acclaimed artist who exhibits at some of the country’s most prestigious venues, as well as a devoted husband to his wife, Kim, and father to their three children. At once wrenching and inspiring, this is a story of the remarkable human capacity to overcome the most daunting obstacles and of the extraordinary workings of the human mind.