Days before her fifteenth birthday, life is pretty good for Jessica Murphy. She expects her softball team to make it to the regional championship. She expects to catch the eye of college recruiters. What she doesn't expect is to be told she was born in another world where her twin sister and birth parents await her on the other side of a secret portal. A world away, Lexia struggles to maintain her citizens calm as invasion by a rogue king is imminent. Food supplies are low, the Council is missing, and without her sister, there is little hope for the small land of Almexia. The road to a reunion is filled with excitement, obstacles, and unexpected decisions. Raised in worlds apart, The Twins of Almexia soon discover that together they have the power to change the fate of both worlds forever.

An elephant and a little girl are born on the same day - and their connection lasts a lifetime.

A beautiful and suspenseful tale by a master American novelist, The Midnight Twins tells the story of mirror twins born on either side of midnight. After a mysterious and nearly fatal fi re on their thirteenth birthday, Meredith and Mallory Brynn begin having visions: Mallory can see into the past, Meredith can see into the future. But it will take both of them to save their town from a great evil. That is, if their unique powers don?t destroy them fi rst.

Based on the award-winning The Elder Scrolls, The Infernal City is the first of two exhilarating novels following events that continue the story from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, named 2006 Game of the Year. Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow—for wherever it falls, people die and rise again. And it is in Umbriel’s shadow that a great adventure begins, and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret. A spy on the trail of a vast conspiracy. A mage obsessed with his desire for revenge. And Annaig, a young girl in whose hands the fate of Tamriel may rest . . . .

Forty years after the Oblivion crisis, the empire of Tamriel is threatened by a mysterious floating city, Umbriel, whose shadow spawns a terrifying undead army. Reeling from a devastating discovery, Prince Attrebus continues on his seemingly doomed quest to obtain a magic sword that holds the key to destroying the deadly invaders. Meanwhile, in the Imperial City, the spy Colin finds evidence of betrayal at the heart of the empire—if his own heart doesn’t betray him first. And Annaïg, trapped in Umbriel itself, has become a slave to its dark lord and his insatiable hunger for souls. How can these three unlikely heroes save Tamriel when they cannot even save themselves? Based on the award-winning Elder Scrolls® series, Lord of Souls is the second of two exhilarating novels that continue the story from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, named 2006 Game of the Year by numerous outlets, including Spike TV, the Golden Joystick Awards, and the Associated Press.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the bestselling and most influential video games of the past decade. From the return of world-threatening dragons to an ongoing civil war, the province of Skyrim is rich with adventure, lore, magic, history, and stunning vistas. Beyond its visual spectacle alone, Skyrim is an exemplary gameworld that reproduces out-of-game realities, controversies, and histories for its players. Being Dragonborn, then, comes to signify a host of ethical and ideological choices for the player, both inside and outside the gameworld. These essays show how playing Skyrim, in many ways, is akin to "playing" 21st century America with its various crises, conflicts, divisions, and inequalities. Topics covered include racial inequality and white supremacy, gender construction and misogyny, the politics of modding, rhetorics of gameplay, and narrative features.

For young Ben Boarman, it started off as a typical Halloween with his sister, Bailey. That is until they met a woman who gave him a strange warning, "Don't forget to check the well!" Sure enough, later that evening, Ben received a cryptic message and an interesting new ability near the well in his backyard. From there, Ben and two of his friends, Dan and Althea are drawn into a mysterious battle in the small town of Linford between two powerful groups, the Keepers and the Habitué. The Keepers have called upon Ben to help them but the Habitué have someone as well, Darell Novitski. Darell is smart, strong and utterly devoted to the Habitué. Ben and his friends are intent on preventing the Habitué from succeeding in their plans for Linford but with Darell in their way they realize that time may not be on their side. The Habitué are everywhere. They are nowhere. They are the shadows. And they will not be stopped.

Written in the 1840s and published here for the first time, Julia Ward Howe's novel about a hermaphrodite is unlike anything of its time--or, in truth, of our own. Narrated by Laurence, who is raised and lives as a man, is loved by men and women alike, and can respond to neither, this unconventional story explores the understanding "that fervent hearts must borrow the disguise of art, if they would win the right to express, in any outward form, the internal fire that consumes them." Laurence describes his repudiation by his family, his involvement with an attractive widow, his subsequent wanderings and eventual attachment to a sixteen-year-old boy, his own tutelage by a Roman nobleman and his sisters, and his ultimate reunion with his early love. His is a story unique in nineteenth-century American letters, at once a remarkable reflection of a largely hidden inner life and a richly imagined tale of coming of age at odds with one's culture. Howe wrote "The Hermaphrodite" when her own marriage was challenged by her husband's affection for another man--and when prevailing notions regarding a woman's appropriate role in patriarchal structures threatened Howe's intellectual and emotional survival. The novel allowed Howe, and will now allow her readers, to occupy a speculative realm otherwise inaccessible in her historical moment.