Create authentic-looking maps of fantasy cities, hamlets, fortifications and more in a popular tabletop, RPG style. • 30+ step-by-step demonstrations show you how to create your own unique RPG maps • Learn how to draw fantasy cities, medieval settlements and more from a professional gaming illustrator • Tips and techniques for drawing fences, stone walls, forests, fields, bridges, footpaths, mountains, harbors, shields, coats of arms and other cartography elements Put your design and drawing skills on the map!

A Newbery Honor Book A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book for Teen Readers From Christina Soontornvat, the visionary and versatile author of three Newbery Honor Books, comes a high-seas adventure set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world. In a fantasy adventure every bit as compelling and confident in its world building as her Newbery Honor Book A Wish in the Dark, Christina Soontornvat explores a young woman’s struggle to unburden herself of the past and chart her own destiny in a world of secrets. As assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker, twelve-year-old Sai plays the part of a well-bred young lady with a glittering future. In reality, her father is a conman—and in a kingdom where the status of one’s ancestors dictates their social position, the truth could ruin her. Sai seizes the chance to join an expedition to chart the southern seas, but she isn’t the only one aboard with secrets. When Sai learns that the ship might be heading for the fabled Sunderlands—a land of dragons, dangers, and riches beyond imagining—she must weigh the cost of her dreams. Vivid, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this tale of identity and integrity is as beautiful and intricate as the maps of old.

When Tanya Barrett takes an internship at MapOut, she expects emotional landmines. Her father co-founded the digital mapping company, and he died for it-on a cartographic expedition he didn't even need to take. Her father's business partner and his son, Connor, welcome her. Connor may be the only person who can make Tanya feel normal these days. But Tanya and Connor stumble onto a deadly secret, and the next day Connor disappears. It's soon clear that people at MapOut are willing to kill for what they discovered. Alone again-and on the run-Tanya must rely on her wits to find out what happened to him. In the world MapOut envisions, no one stays lost for long.

Shortlisted for The Readings Children's Book Prize 2015 Adventure and danger lie just off the edge of the map in this swashbuckling new trilogy! Quinn's older brothers may long for adventure, but he is content with a quiet life on the farm. Destiny, however, has other plans. The King is determined to create the first map of the world and has scoured the kingdom for boys who could become mapmakers. When Quinn is chosen for the King's training school, he's amazed - but that is nothing compared to his shock when he is selected as one of the three mapmakers and finds himself on board a ship, competing for the big prize. So begins Quinn's reluctant journey deep into the unknown, on a ship captained by a slave, with a stowaway girl on board, and a mysterious sea monster that seems to be following them. Hot on their trail are the other competitors for the King's prize, who will stop at nothing to win. The Mapmaker Chronicles: Race to the End of the World is packed with action, adventure and intrigue, as Quinn battles unexpected enemies, discovers strange new lands and tries to conceal two very big secrets from his crewmates... 'Not since Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest series has there been such an exciting adventure tale from an Australian author' - Readings The Mapmaker Chronicles 1. Race to the End of the World 2. Prisoner of the Black Hawk 3. Breath of the Dragon (October 2015)

After being given an apprenticeship to chart her entire kingdom, young Aoife encounters a secretive culture of wealthy and peaceful people who she protects by enduring a harrowing exile.

Quinn is back! He finished his race around the world and is living a quiet life on the family farm, until he discovers that the King's enemies want to capture him. Quinn is forced to go on the run, taking to the high seas once more. Can he survive when he is double-crossed and left for dead? BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE MAP is another thrilling adventure from A.L. Tait in the bestselling Mapmaker Chronicles.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter and Marilla of Green Gables, a story of family, love, and courage When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril. Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance. Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.

"Vividly detailed and beautifully written, this is a pleasure to read, a thoughtful, deeply engaging story of the power of faith to navigate history's rough terrain."—Booklist How Far Would You Go To Stay True to Yourself? Spain, 1492. On the eve of the Jewish expulsion from Spain, Amalia Riba stands at a crossroads. In a country violently divided by religion, she must either convert to Christianity and stay safe, or remain a Jew and risk everything. It's a choice she's been walking toward her whole life, from the days of her youth when her family lit the Shabbat candles in secret. Back then, she saw the vast possibility of the world, outlined in the beautiful pen and ink maps her father created. But the world has shifted and contracted since then. The Mapmaker's Daughter is a stirring novel about identity, exile, and what it means to be home. "A close look at the great costs and greater rewards of being true to who you really are. A lyrical journey to the time when the Jews of Spain were faced with the wrenching choice of deciding their future as Jews—a pivotal period of history and inspiration today."—Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I "The many twists and turns in the life of the mapmaker's daughter, Amalia, mirror the tenuous and harrowing journey of the Jewish community in fifteenth-century Iberia, showing how family and faith overcame even the worst the Inquisition could inflict on them."—Anne Easter Smith, author of Royal Mistress and A Rose for the Crown "A powerful love story ignites these pages, making the reader yearn for more as they come to know Amalia and Jamil, two of the most compelling characters in recent historical fiction. An absolute must-read!"—Michelle Moran, author of The Second Empress and Madam Tussaud

In sixteenth-century Venice, in an island monastery, a cloistered monk experiences the adventure of a lifetime—all within the confines of his cell. Part historical fiction, part philosophical mystery, A Mapmaker's Dream tells the story of Fra Mauro and his struggle to realize his life's work: to make a perfect map—one that represents the full breadth of Creation. News of Mauro's projects attracts explorers, pilgrims, travelers, and merchants, all eager to contribute their accounts of faraway people and places. As he listens to the tales of the strange and fantastic things they've seen, Mauro comes to regard the world as much more than continents and kingdoms: that it is also made up of a vast and equally real interior landscape of beliefs, aspirations, and dreams. Mauro's map grows and takes shape, becoming both more complete and incomprehensible. In the process, the boundaries of Mauro's world are pushed to the extreme, raising questions about the relationship between representation, imagination, and the nature of reality itself.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission. One was murdered, another perished from fever, and a third-Jean Godin-nearly died of heartbreak. At the expedition's end, Jean and his Peruvian wife, Isabel Gramesen, became stranded at opposite ends of the Amazon, victims of a tangled web of international politics. Isabel's solo journey to reunite with Jean after their calamitous twenty-year separation was so dramatic that it left all of 18th-century Europe spellbound. Her survival-unprecedented in the annals of Amazon exploration-was a testament to human endurance, female resourcefulness, and the power of devotion. Drawing on the original writings of the French mapmakers, as well as his own experience retracing Isabel's journey, acclaimed writer Robert Whitaker weaves a riveting tale rich in adventure, intrigue, and scientific achievement. Never before told, The Mapmaker's Wife is an epic love story that unfolds against the backdrop of "the greatest expedition the world has ever known."