"17 years ago: A girl in South Dakota falls through the earth, then wakes up dozens of feet below ground on the palm of what seems to be a giant metal hand. Today: She is a top-level physicist leading a team of people to understand exactly what that hand is, where it came from, and what it portends for humanity. A swift and spellbinding tale told almost exclusively through transcriptions of interviews conducted by a mysterious and unnamed character,...

"The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt--the 'over-tall' eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of the town--walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined...

"Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a moutain cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found. Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there's a lead: a single photograph taken by Susso Myren. Myren has devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo, who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that trolls are real, she follows...

"The year is 1937 and Andorra Kelsey--7'11" and just under 320 pounds--is on her way to Hollywood to become a star. Hoping to escape both poverty and the ghost of her dead husband, she accepts an offer from the wily Rutherford Simone to star in a movie about the life of Anna Swan, the Nova Scotia giantess who toured the world in the 19th century. In parallel narrative, Anna Swan's story unfurls. Where Andorra is seen as a disgrace by an embarrassed...

Hilda and her mom have settled into their new home in the city of Trolberg. Pining for her magical friends and the wonder-filled wilderness, Hilda is finding it hard to fit in, especially at school. But when Hilda makes a new friend she soon begins to uncover some surprising secrets ... Perhaps this concrete labyrinth is a place where wonderful and magical things can happen too?

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, and although previously there have been competent scholarly translations of it, until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed translator Stephen Mitchell's lithe, muscular rendering allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is. His insightful...