What is a Borrible? Borribles are runaways who dwell in the shadows of London. Apart from their pointed ears, they look just like ordinary children. They live by their wits and a few Borrible laws--the chief one being, Don't Get Caught! The Borribles are outcasts--but they wouldn't have it any other way.... One night, the Borribles of Battersea discover a Rumble--one of the giant, rat-shaped creatures who are their ancient enemy--in their territory. Fearing an invasion, an elite group of Borrible fighters set out on what will become known in legend as The Great Rumble Hunt. So begins the first of the three epic adventures in Michael de Larrabeiti's classic trilogy, where excitement, violence, low cunning, greed, generosity, treachery, and bravery exist side by side. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A smalll group of feral, street-wise Peter-Pan-type beings set out on three very different but related missions across the darker side of London. They are missions combining excitement, violence, low cunning, betrayal, loyalty, greed, generosity, cowardice and insane bravery. This is an epic fantasy adventure that is both thought-provoking and thrilling until the very last second, set against the backdrop of an all too familiar yet weirdly different urban landscape. For the first time, Michael de Larrabeiti's much-loved, classic novels The Borribles, The Borribles Go for Broke and Across the Dark Metropolis are brought together in one book.
What is a Borrible? Borribles are runaways who dwell in the shadows of London. Apart from their pointed ears, they look just like ordinary children. They live by their wits and a few Borrible laws—the chief one being, Don't Get Caught! The Borribles are outcasts—but they wouldn't have it any other way.... The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis Battersea was no longer safe for a Borrible. The Special Borrible Group—a secret section of the London police dedicated to finding Borribles and clipping their ears—was closing in. Driven on by the fanatical Inspector Sussworth, the SBG was determined to wipe them out once and for all. It was time to break out, escort Sam the horse to safety in Neasden, then return to the old Borrible life of independence and freedom. So began a perilous trek across the dark metropolis—a journey that would test the courage and cunning of the Adventurers to the limits. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
“Always perfectly magical.” —Neil Gaiman A timeless classic with brand-new cover art! Diana Wynne Jones’s bestselling, magical, and funny Chrestomanci novels will enchant fans of Soman Chainani, Rick Riordan, and Chris Colfer. Volume II contains The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week. In the Magicians of Caprona, the two warring families of Caprona, the Montanas and the Petrocchis, must join forces to keep the White Devil from invading their city. Even Chrestomanci becomes involved when two of the youngest family members, Tonino Montana and Angelica Petrocchi, go missing. Their unusual magical powers will be key to stopping the White Devil. Witch Week takes place in a world where witches are burned at the stake, so when a note reading “Someone in this class is a witch” appears in Class 6B, it’s no laughing matter. Only Chrestomanci can sort out the mess that the students of 6B get themselves into. The second of three volumes, the Chronicles of Chrestomanci can be read in any order.
'Armfield is an enormous, gut-wrenching talent.' Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under 'salt slow is exemplary. A distinct new gothic, melancholy, powerful and poised.' China Miéville, author of The City & The City This collection of short stories is about women and their experiences in society, about bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of its characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession and love. Throughout the collection, women become insects, men turn to stone, a city becomes insomniac and bodies are picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sea side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to the bodies of its inhabitants. Blending the mythic and the gothic, the collection considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new. From Julia Armfield, the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, Salt Slow is an extraordinary collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock.
WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS • A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” (The Washington Post) “[China Miéville’s] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in and around the magical city-state of New Crobuzon, have the refreshing effect of making Middle-earth seem plodding and flat.”—The New York Times The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released. The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.
A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon. For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave. Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . . China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Miéville’s Embassytown.
A young man discovers his identity among a tribe of rats in the renowned fantasy author’s "riveting, brilliant novel"—with an introduction by Tim Maughan (Charles de Lint). Something is stirring in London’s dark, stamping out its territory in brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul Garamond’s father, and left Saul to pay for the crime. But a shadow from the urban waste breaks into Saul’s prison cell and leads him to freedom: a shadow called King Rat. King Rat reveals to Saul his own royal heritage—a heritage that draws him into the grimy, magical world below London’s streets. With drum-and-bass pounding the backstreets, Saul must confront the forces that would use him, the ones that would destroy him, and those that have shaped his own bizarre identity. World Fantasy Award–winning author China Miéville began his astounding career with the novel King Rat, which combines a young man’s search for identity with a pulse-pounding story of revenge and madness. This Tor Essential edition includes an introduction by Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail.
This volume explores the politics and poetics of Victorian surfaces in their manifold manifestations. In so doing, it examines various cultural products ‘as they are’ and highlights the art of surface composition in the Victorian era as well as the socio-cultural ramifications of the preoccupation with the exterior. By closely reading the various surfaces materialising in Victorian literature and culture, the individual contributions explore the dialectics of surface and depth in Victorian (and Neo-Victorian) cultures as well as the legibility of surfaces. They look into the surfaces of literary narratives, paintings, and film but also into natural surfaces such as skin or bark. Each chapter foregrounds what is present rather than absent in a text, while also paying attention to the surfaces that become manifest on the diegetic level of the text, be they cloth, landscapes, or human bodies or faces. This is an open access book.
