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He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a
boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a
thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But "he"
is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the
mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels
over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and
in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for
years. But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does.
And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When
she dies, so will he. Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy
for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary
city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published
decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a
notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel
of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.
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Thessaly (Paperback)
Jo Walton
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R866
R737
Discovery Miles 7 370
Save R129 (15%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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'Here in the Just City you will become your best selves. You will
learn and grow and strive to be excellent.' One day, in a moment of
philosophical puckishness, the time-travelling goddess Pallas
Athene decides to put Plato to the test and create the Just City.
She locates the City on a Mediterranean island and populates it
with over ten thousand children and a few hundred adults from all
eras of history . . . along with some handy robots from the far
human future. Meanwhile, Apollo - stunned by the realization that
there are things that human beings understand better than he does -
has decided to become a mortal child, head to Athene's City and see
what all the fuss is about. Then Socrates arrives, and starts
asking troublesome questions. What happens next is a tale only the
brilliant Jo Walton could tell.
Here is a tale of a family dealing with the death of their father,
a son who goes to court for his inheritance, a son who agonizes
over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in
love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement,
and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.
Here is what sounds for all the world like an enjoyable Victorian
novel, perhaps by Anthony Trollope...except that everyone in the
story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.
Here are politics and train stations, churchmen and family
retainers, courtship, and country houses...in which, on the death
of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased.
In which society's high and mighty members avail themselves of the
privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do
with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.
You have never read a novel like "Tooth and Claw."
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Farthing (Paperback)
Jo Walton
1
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R314
R257
Discovery Miles 2 570
Save R57 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Eight years after they overthrew Churchill and led Britain into a
separate peace with Hitler, the upper-crust families of the
"Farthing set" are gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is
estranged Farthing scion Lucy Kahn, who can't understand why her
and her husband David's presence was so forcefully requested. Then
the country-house idyll is interrupted when the eminent Sir James
Thirkie is found murdered - with a yellow Star of David pinned to
his chest. Lucy begins to realize that her Jewish husband is about
to be framed for the crime - an outcome that would be convenient
for altogether too many of the various political machinations
underway in Parliament in the coming week. But whoever's behind the
murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal
investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private
reasons for sympathizing with outcasts and underdogs - and prone to
look beyond the obvious as a result. As the trap slowly shuts on
Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out - a way fraught with
peril in a darkening world.
A family of dragons gathers on the occasion of the death of their
father, the elder Bon Agornin. As is custom, they must eat the
body. But even as Bon's last remains are polished off, his sons and
daughters must all jostle for a position in the new hierarchy.
While the youngest son seeks greedy remuneration through the courts
of law, the eldest son - a dragon of the cloth - agonises over his
father's deathbed confession. While one daughter is caught between
loyalty to her family by blood and her family by marriage, another
daughter follows her heart - only to discover the great cost of
true love...Here is a Victorian story of political intrigue, family
ties and political intrigue, set in a world of dragons - a world,
quite literally, red in tooth and claw. Full of fiery wit, this is
a novel unlike any other.
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Lent (Hardcover)
Jo Walton
1
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R640
R451
Discovery Miles 4 510
Save R189 (30%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Young Girolamo's life is a series of miracles. It's a miracle that
he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with
the force of his will. It's a miracle that he's friends with Pico
della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It's a miracle that when
Girolamo visits the death bed of Lorenzo "the Magnificent," the
dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to
everyone, Lorenzo included. It's a miracle that when Charles VIII
of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field,
and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it.
It's a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It's
a miracle that, despite the Pope's determination to bring young
Girolamo to heel, he's still on the loose...and, now, running
Florence in all but name. That's only the beginning. Because
Girolamo Savanarola is not who - or what - he thinks he is. He will
discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible
time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.
Jo Walton is an award-winning author of, inveterate reader of, and
chronic re-reader of science fiction and fantasy books. What Makes
This Book So Great? is a selection of the best of her musings about
her prodigious reading habit. Jo Walton's many subjects range from
acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities
and gems. Among them, the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge;
the question of what genre readers mean by 'mainstream'; the
under-appreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many
approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel
R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish
novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you
have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes
This Book So Great is an immensely engaging collection of
provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day
fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers.
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Half a Crown (Paperback)
Jo Walton; Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
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R483
R407
Discovery Miles 4 070
Save R76 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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For the first time in paperback, the culminating novel of Hugo and
Nebula Award-winner Jo Walton's stunning Small Change
trilogy.
Following the award-winning "Farthing" and its sequel" Ha'penny,"
"Half a Crown" is an amazing alternate-world noir tale of
resistance to encroaching fascism, from the author of "Among
Others."
In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a
rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and
banquets of Britain's upper class never faltered, while British
ships ferried "undesirables" across the Channel to board the cattle
cars headed east.
Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch, Britain's distinctly
British secret police. It's his job to warn the Prime Minister of
treason, to arrest plotters, to discover Jews. The midnight knock
of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in the realm.
Now, in 1960, a global peace conference is convening in London,
where Britain, Germany, and Japan will oversee the final partition
of the world. Hitler is once again on British soil. So is the
long-exiled Duke of Windsor--and the rising gangs of "British
Power" streetfighters, who consider the Government "soft," may be
the former king's bid to stage a coup d'etat.
Amidst all this, two of the most unlikely persons in the realm will
join forces to oppose the fascists: a debutante whose greatest
worry until now has been where to find the right string of pearls,
and the Watch Commander himself.
"A literary Guernica--a top-notch thriller set in a terrified
Britain that is all too willing to trade freedom for security, and
which gets neither." --Cory Doctorow on "Ha'penny"
Before Jo Walton won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her stunning
"Among Others, " she published a trilogy set in a dark alternate
postwar England that had negotiated "Peace with Honor" with Nazi
Germany in 1941. These novels--"Farthing, Ha'penny, "and "Half a
Crown"--are connected by common threads, but can be read in any
order.
In "Ha'penny, " England has completed its slide into fascist
dicatorship. The last hopes of democracy seem extinguished. Then a
bomb explodes in a London suburb.
The brilliant but compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard
is assigned the case. What he finds leads him to a conspiracy of
peers and communists--of staunch King-and-Country patriots and
hardened IRA gunmen--to murder the Prime Minister and his ally,
Adolf Hitler.
Against a background of domestic espionage and suppression, a band
of idealists blackmails an actress who holds the key to the
Fuhrer's death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the
ha'pennys that cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the
investigation swirl inexorably to a stunning conclusion.
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Lent (Paperback)
Jo Walton
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R539
R454
Discovery Miles 4 540
Save R85 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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It's a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he
can cast them out with the force of his will. It's a miracle that
he's friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia.
It's a miracle that when Girolamo visits the death bed of Lorenzo
"the Magnificent," the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light,
a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It's a miracle that when
Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him
in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also
protect it. It's a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds
swoon. It's a miracle that, despite the Pope's determination to
bring young Girolamo to heel, he's still on the loose...and, now,
running Florence in all but name. That's only the beginning.
Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who - or what - he thinks he is.
He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling
possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many
lives.
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Starlings (Paperback)
Jo Walton
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R409
R339
Discovery Miles 3 390
Save R70 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"Starlings isn't really a short-story collection. It's something
better: a written showreel, illustrating yet again that [Walton's]
imagination stretches to the stars (or the starlings), and that
she's endlessly inventive in finding new methods to express
it."-NPR Books An ancient coin cyber-spies on lovers and thieves.
The magic mirror sees all but can do nothing. A cloned savior
solves a fanatically-inspired murder. Three Irish siblings thieve
treasures with bad poetry and the aid of the Queen of Cats. With
these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo
Walton shines through subtle myths and reinvented realities.
Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and
more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic-rising from the
every day into the universe itself.
'It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear
anything as long as there are books.' Fifteen-year-old Morwenna
lives in Wales with her twin sister and a mother who spins dark
magic for ill. One day, Mori and her mother fight a powerful,
magical battle that kills her sister and leaves Mori crippled.
Devastated, Mori flees to her long-lost father in England. Adrift,
outcast at boarding school, Mori retreats into the worlds she knows
best: her magic and her books. She works a spell to meet kindred
souls and continues to devour every fantasy and science fiction
novel she can lay her hands on. But danger lurks... She knows her
mother is looking for her and that when she finds her, there will
be no escape.
As any reader of Jo Walton's "Among Others" might guess, Walton
is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic
re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site
Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her
re-reading"--"about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from
acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities
and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular
features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the
best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of
some of the field's most ambitious series.
Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels
of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by
"mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh;
the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science
fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children;
"the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A.
Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read.
Over 130 essays in all, "What Makes This Book So Great" is an
immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated
thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction,
from one of our best writers.
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Ha'penny (Paperback)
Jo Walton
1
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R256
R243
Discovery Miles 2 430
Save R13 (5%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In Ha'penny, England has completed its slide into fascist
dictatorship. The last hopes of democracy seem extinguished. Then a
bomb explodes in a London suburb. The brilliant but compromised
Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. What he
finds leads him to a conspiracy of peers and communists - of
staunch King-and-Country patriots and hardened IRA gunmen - to
murder the Prime Minister and his ally, Adolf Hitler. Against a
background of domestic espionage and suppression, a band of
idealists blackmails an actress who holds the key to the Fuhrer's
death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the ha'pennys that
cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the investigation swirl
inexorably to a stunning conclusion.
In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a
rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and
banquets of Britain's upper class never faltered, while British
ships ferried "undesirables" across the Channel to board the cattle
cars headed east. Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch,
Britain's distinctly British secret police. It's his job to warn
the Prime Minister of treason, to arrest plotters, and to discover
Jews. The midnight knock of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in
the realm. Now, in 1960, a global peace conference is convening in
London, where Britain, Germany, and Japan will oversee the final
partition of the world. Hitler is once again on British soil. So is
the long exiled Duke of Windsor - and the rising gangs of "British
Power" streetfighters, who consider the Government "soft," may be
the former king's bid to stage a coup d'etat. Amidst all this, two
of the most unlikely persons in the realm will join forces to
oppose the fascists: a debutante whose greatest worry until now has
been where to find the right string of pearls, and the Watch
Commander himself.
First published in 2006, Jo Walton's "Farthing" was hailed as a
masterpiece, a darkly romantic thriller set in an alternate postwar
England sliding into fascism.
Eight years after they overthrew Churchill and led Britain into a
separate peace with Hitler, the upper-crust families of the
"Farthing set" are gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is
estranged Farthing scion Lucy Kahn, who can't understand why her
and her husband David's presence was so forcefully requested. Then
the country-house idyll is interrupted when the eminent Sir James
Thirkie is found murdered--with a yellow Star of David pinned to
his chest.
Lucy begins to realize that her Jewish husband is about to be
framed for the crime--an outcome that would be convenient for
altogether too many of the various political machinations underway
in Parliament in the coming week. But whoever's behind the murder,
and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from
Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for
sympathizing with outcasts and underdogs--and prone to look beyond
the obvious as a result.
As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way
out--a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.
|
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