Here comes the sixth volume of The Order of the Stick, the fantasy-comedy webcomic that everyone agrees gets longer with each book released! In Utterly Dwarfed, the Order is on their way north to save the world in style, thanks to their new friends on a cool pirate airship. Little do they suspect that while they deal with monsters and the usual plot stuff, one of their own is facing a battle inside their own mind! (It's Durkon, obviously.) And when the gods themselves start taking a closer interest in Roy's band of misfit heroes, this action-packed adventure ends up having repercussions so big, we couldn't fit them on the page! With almost five years of comics, this mammoth collection is our longest book yet (not counting the previous one). Made in the USA.

"The Order of the Stick: Blood Runs in the Family brings the titular band of heroes to a strange desert land where hidden family secrets await! We're not going to tell you what they are, because they're secrets. I mean, seriously. But they're pretty great, at least if you're a fan of Rich Burlew's record-smashing fantasy-comedy-action-drama webcomic, The Order of the Stick. Thrill as Roy and the gang face reptilian bounty hunters, mysterious death priests, dinosaur-riding soldiers, and a little something we like to call 'personal responsibility' as they brave the elements in the fifth book in the bewilderingly popular figure saga!"--Page 4 of cover.

The third compilation of the popular online stick figure comic, The Order of the Stick, finds the heroes on the front line of a battle they didn't see coming.

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

An international bestseller published in over thirty countries, this riveting sci-fi dystopic thriller is “a bona fide page-turner.” --MTV.com Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie’s only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man. He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie’s head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter. Callie soon discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations’ plans are more evil than she could ever have imagined. . . . Includes Portrait of a Spore, a never-before-published short story that takes place in the world of STARTERS. Praise for STARTERS: “A smart, swift, inventive, altogether gripping story.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author DEAN KOONTZ “Compelling, pulse-pounding, exciting . . . Don’t miss it!” —New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr “Readers who have been waiting for a worthy successor to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games will find it here. Dystopian sci-fi at its best.” —Los Angeles Times “Intriguing, thought-provoking and addictive.” —BookReporter.com “Readers will stay hooked. . . . Constantly rising stakes keep this debut intense.” —Kirkus Reviews “Fast-paced dystopian fiction. . . . The inevitable sequel can’t appear soon enough.” —Booklist "Intriguing, fast-paced . . . Fans of dystopian novels will be completely engaged and clamoring for the sequel." —School Library Journal “Addictive and alluring.” —Examiner.com “Chilling and riveting.” —Shelf-Awareness.com “A must-read for fans of The Hunger Games and Legend. Fast-paced, romantic, and thought-provoking.” —Justine

A seductive novel of southern lyricism. Monte Schulz's prose novel opens in the spring of 1929, as the 19-year-old consumptive farm boy Alvin Pendergast attends an ill-fated dance marathon he's too sickly to participate in. After a year of his life has been stolen by a sanitarium, Alvin knows he's relapsing, and dreads not only the drudgery of his family's homestead, but a return to the hospital. In this state of mind, an invitation for a late-night slice of pie is too seductive to pass up and before he knows it, Alvin crosses the Mississippi River and finds himself working for a slick con artist named Chester Burke. Alvin is no match for Chester, who's not merely a con man, but a gangster from Chicago, following the bootleg liquor trade through the small towns of America's middle border. With Alvin in tow, Chester's insouciant disregard for life serves him well as he embarks upon a series of bank robberies and senseless murders. All summer long, Chester assumes the role of a dark angel on Judgment day, cleansing the scrolls of those whose sad fortune had drawn them across his path. Too ill to flee, too morally weak to object, Alvin resigns himself to what seems like certain doom somewhere down the road. Fortunately, Alvin finds another companion on his journey, a lonely, eccentric, and grandiloquent dwarf named Rascal, whose own infirmity binds his and the farm boy's destiny together. Drawn deeper and deeper into Chester's murderous frolic, they come across a curious assortment of characters, from small town businessmen and religious kooks to wayward girls and dance contestants, spiritualists and sideshow freaks. Caught between Chester's villainy and Alvin's own physical deterioration, the young farm boy must make a decision: stick with Chester, who would surely kill him at the slightest hint of betrayal, or muster the courage to stake his life on faith in Rascal's clever plan to save them both. Tired of being afraid, Alvin finally grasps the need not only to outwit the gangster but to find another road to travel. What he discovers about the meaning of home offers a solution to escape and freedom. This Side of Jordan is a thoroughly American novel told in the voice of a lost generation hurtling toward the Great Depression, and evokes a long ago America of crowded Main Streets and tourist camps, miles of cornfields, rural church¬es, and musty parlors. It ends on the fairgrounds of a traveling wagon circus that beckons gangster, farm boy, and dwarf toward a startling resolution, and a hard-fought absolution for the two young, frightened collaborators. The narrative of this novel has the momentum of a freight train, but told in the seductive, rhythmic tradition of Southern lyricism reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote, and filled with vivid, outsized literary characters. If Jim Thompson and Carson McCullers went on a collaborative bender by kidnapping Holden Caulfield, Perry Smith, and Ignatius J. Reilly, they'd have come up with something like This Side of Jordan.

Continues the adventures of six stick-figure heroes as they leave the dungeon behind and set out to explore the great outdoors.

Celebrated for her unique blend of first-class suspense and five-star fare, Diane Mott Davidson has won scores of fans and earned a place on major bestseller lists across the country. Now she dishes up another dangerously tasty treat of murder and mystery. For Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz, accepting a series of bookings at Hyde Castle is like a dream come true. It’s not every day that she gets to cook authentic Elizabethan fare--especially at a real castle that was brought over from England and reassembled stone by stone in Aspen Meadow. Goldy is determined that everything will go right--which is why, she figures later, everything went terribly wrong. It begins when a shotgun blast shatters her window. Then Goldy discovers a body lying in a nearby creek. And when shots ring out for the second time that day, someone Goldy loves is in the line of fire. Suddenly the last thing Goldy wants to think about is Shakespeare’s Steak Pie, 911 Chocolate Emergency Cookies, or Damson-in-Distress Plum Tart. Could one of her husband Tom’s police investigations have triggered a murder? Or was her violent, recently paroled ex responsible? With death peering around every corner, Goldy needs to cook up some crime-solving solutions--before the only dish that’s left on her menu is murder.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

“In this slow-simmering but rewarding retelling, first-novelist Bunce presents an innovative interpretation of Rumpelstiltskin.” —Horn Book Winner of the William C. Morris Award for a Young Adult Debut An ALA Best Book for Young Adults A Smithsonian Notable Book An Oprah’s Book Club Kids’ Reading List Teen Selection The gold thread promises Charlotte Miller a chance to save her family’s beloved woolen mill. It promises a future for her sister, jobs for her townsfolk, security against her grasping uncle—maybe even true love. To get the thread, Charlotte must strike a bargain with its maker, the mysterious Jack Spinner. But the gleam of gold conjures a shadowy past—secrets ensnaring generations of Millers. And Charlotte’s mill, her family, her love—what do those matter to a stranger who can spin straw into gold? This is an award-winning and wholly original retelling of “Rumplestiltskin.” “Set in a rural valley in the late 1700s, this reworking of the ‘Rumplestiltskin’ story includes ghosts, witchcraft, elements of Georgian society, and much earlier folk magic in the guise of a novel of manners.” —School Library Journal “A Curse Dark as Gold beats the hell out of any fantasy novel I’ve read this year. Her heroine/narrator is immensely appealing; the atmosphere of a world on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution is completely believable; and the suspense of the story builds so craftily that I started taking notes on just how she does it.” —Peter S. Beagle, World Fantasy Award-winning author “An intelligent, original, and interesting new take on an old fairy tale, and a marvelous debut novel.” —Teen Book Review