On a day like today we’re all stuck in the clouds, and there’s no cure better than a good book. For some of us, though, even sunny days can’t lure us from our dream state, and it’s a good book that’s to blame. I’m talking about you, fantasy readers. But it’s all good. On this true rainy day, we could all follow your example… into lands and times far, far away…
Capture a great fantasy or science fiction book in any of these places:
Or check out some of our favorites (synopses from our catalog):
1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman;
Just released from prison, Shadow encounters Mr. Wednesday, an enigmatic stranger who seems to know a lot about him, and when Mr. Wednesday offers him a job as his bodyguard, Shadow accepts and is plunged into a dark and perilous world.
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde;
In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world’s Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.
3. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley;
Retells the legend of King Arthur as perceived by the women central to the tale, from the zealous Morgaine, sworn to uphold her goddess at any cost, to the devout Gwenhwyfar, pledged to the king but drawn to another.
4. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon;
Hurtled back through time more than two hundred years to Scotland in 1743, Claire Randall finds herself caught in the midst of an unfamiliar world torn apart by violence, pestilence, and revolution and haunted by her growing feelings for James Fraser, a young soldier.
5. The Gunslinger by Stephen King;
Roland, the world’s last gunslinger, tracks an enigmatic Man in Black toward a forbidding dark tower, fighting forces both mortal and other-worldy on his quest.
6. The Host by Stephenie Meyer;
The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed. But Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away.
7. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern;
Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien;
The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish.
9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell;
In what must rank among the year’s more ambitious novels, Mitchell (Ghostwritten) presents six quasicliffhanger stories in six different time periods. Beginning with a mid-19th-century Pacific voyage, the book then vaults to an early 20th-century composer who cuckolds his mentor, a 1970s reporter pursued by hitmen when she joins forces with a company whistleblower, a put-upon editor trapped inside a home for the aged, a servant clone interrogated about her travels to the outside world, and, finally, a return to the Pacific, only centuries later in a post-civilization world.
10. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.
An English astronomer, in company with an artilleryman, a country curate, and others, struggle to survive the invasion of Earth by Martians in 1894.