The 9 books on this stack
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Book Censor's Library
Buthaynah ʻĪsá · 2024
FINALIST, National Book Award for Translated Literature, 2024 A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government. The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish--allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture. Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell's 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. The Book Censor's Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.
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A Study in Drowning
Ava Reid · 2023
Effy has always believed in fairy tales. She's had no choice. Since childhood, she's been haunted by visions of the Fairy King. She's found solace only in the pages of Angharad - a beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, and then destroys him. Effy's tattered copy is all that's keeping her afloat through her stifling first term her prestigious architecture college. So when the late author's family announces a contest to design his house, Effy fells certain this is her destiny. But Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task: a musty, decrepit estate on the brink of crumbling into a hungry sea. And when Effy arrives, she finds she isn't the only one who's made a temporary home there. Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar, is studying Myrddin's papers and is determined to prove her favourite author is a fraud. As the two rival students investigate the reclusive author's legacy, piecing together clues through his letters, books, and diaries, they discover that the house's foundation isn't the only thing that can't be trusted. There are dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspiring against them - and the truth may bring them both to ruin.
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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan · 2012
A charming and hilarious adventure that has it all: secret societies, unbreakable codes, underground lairs, cutting-edge technology, the googleplex...and lots of books! Clay Jannon, twenty-six and unemployed, reads books about vampire policemen and teenage wizards. Familiar, predictable books. Books that fit neatly into a section at the bookstore. But he is about to encounter a new species of book entirely: secret, strange, and frantically sought-after. These books will introduce him to the strangest, smartest girl he's ever met. They will lead him across the country, through the shadowed spaces where old words hide. They will set him on a quest to unlock a secret held tight since the time of Gutenberg—a secret that touches us all. But before that, these books will get him a job. Welcome to Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.
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Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón · 2006
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.
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Misery
Stephen King · 2002
The #1 New York Times bestselling tale of terror from master storyteller Stephen King about a famous novelist held hostage in a remote location by his “number one fan”. Bestselling novelist Paul Sheldon thinks he’s finally free of Misery Chastain. In a controversial career move, he’s just killed off the popular protagonist of his beloved romance series in favor of expanding his creative horizons. But such a change doesn’t come without consequences. After a near-fatal car accident in rural Colorado leaves his body broken, Paul finds himself at the mercy of the terrifying rescuer who’s nursing him back to health—his self-proclaimed number one fan, Annie Wilkes. Annie is very upset over what Paul did to Misery and demands that he find a way to bring her back by writing a new novel—his best yet, and one that’s all for her. After all, Paul has all the time in the world to do so as a prisoner in her isolated house...and Annie has some very persuasive and violent methods to get exactly what she wants...
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The Club Dumas
Arturo Pérez-Reverte · 1993
Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. The task seems straightforward, but the unsuspecting Corso is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer. "A cross between Umberto Eco and Anne Rice. Think of The Club Dumas as a beach book for intellectuals."--New York Daily News. Part mystery, part puzzle, part witty intertextual game, The Club Dumas is a wholly original intellectual thriller by the internationally bestselling author of The Flanders Panel and The Seville Communion. Lucas Corso's search for the original copy of a book of the occult takes him from Madrid to Paris and into a secret society of antiquarians.
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Possession
A. S. Byatt · 1890
'Byatt has contrived a masterly ending to a fine work; intelligent, ingenious and humane, Possession bids fair to be looked back upon as one of the most memorable novels of the 1990s' Times Literary Supplement
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The Neverending Story
Michael Ende · 2006
Puffin Clothbound Classics are stunning collectable hardback editions of some of the best-loved classics in the world - including this highly anticipated 45th anniversary edition of The Neverending Story. Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do - Michael Ende Bastian is nobody's idea of a hero, least of all his own. Through the pages of an old book he discovers a mysterious magical world - a world of dragons, monsters, witches and GIANTS! A world that is doomed unless a human can save it... Can Bastian succeed in battling terrible foes and find the strength he needs to give the Empress a new name?
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The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco · 2003
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. The body of one monk is found in a cask of pigs' blood, another is floating in a bathhouse, still another is crushed at the foot of a cliff.