outside, the wind is howling. it is a monster shrieking to get inside.outside, the rain is a solid wall of water.everything is dark. everything is destroyed.everything is gone....Everything except for the desperate courage of those who survive that terrifying night. After hours of cowering in the da[...]

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality . . .Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle--aka the Wee Free Men--a cla[...]

Arch-swindler Moist Van Lipwig never believed his confidence crimes were hanging offenses -- until he found himself with a noose tightly around his neck, dropping through a trapdoor, and falling into ... a government job? By all rights, Moist should have met his maker. Instead, it's Lord Vetinari, s[...]

In a world whose seasons are defined by Christmas sales and Spring Fashions, hundreds of tiny nomes live in the corners and crannies of a human-run department store. They have made their homes beneath the floorboards for generations and no longer remember -- or even believe in -- life beyond the Sto[...]

When H. L. Mencken talked, everyone listened -- like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines w[...]

Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell endures tensions between his parents, watches television coverage of the Gulf War, and plays a computer game called Only You Can Save Mankind, in which he is increasingly drawn into the reality of the alien ScreeWee. Reprint.[...]

The Heroine: Tiffany Aching, incipient witch and cheese maker extraordinaire. Once saved world from Queen of the Elves. Is about to discover that battling evil monarchs is child's play compared to mortal combat with a Hiver (see below). At eleven years old, is boldest heroine ever to have confronted[...]

Tiffany Aching -- the boldest heroine ever to swing a frying pan against the forces of evil -- is beginning her apprenticeship in magic. She expects to work hard, learn spells, and become a witch. She doesn't expect to find herself doing chores, caring for the careless, and trying to outthink an ill[...]

The world is going to end next Saturday, just before dinner, but it turns out there are a few problems--the Antichrist has been misplaced, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles, and the representatives from heaven and hell decide that they like the human race, in a new edition of the [...]

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is [...]

A companion volume to Thud! describes how Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch returns home each night to read Where's My Cow? to his little boy and how, concerned about the book's relevancy to his young son, begins to adapt the book into a dark tale that will be more useful to a youngster growing [...]

It is rare and splendid event when an author is elevated from the underground into the international literary establishment. In the case of England's best-known and best-loved modern satirist, that event has been long overdue. Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent Discworld novels satirize and ce[...]

Be careful what you wish for...Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother named Desiderata who had a good heart, a wise head, and poor planning skills--which unforunately left the Princess Emberella in the care of her other (not quite so good and wise) godmother when DEATH came for Desiderata. So [...]