A long time ago, I wrote the first part of a story, and waited to find outhow it middled, then worked with Jamie Delano and Alisa Kwitney on the end. Foryears people have asked how and when they could read all the story of TheChildren's Crusade. I'm glad to say that it's now been retooled and refinished,and is something both old and new - a forgotten jewel and a new delight."-NeilGaiman For the first time ever, the two-issue miniseries THE CHILDREN'SCRUSADE, written by Neil Gaiman, Alisa Kwitney and Jamie Delano, is collected -and with them, a new chapter written by Toby Litt that completes the tale asGaiman originally envisioned it. When several children go missing in asmall English town, the Dead Boy Detectives are on the case. A series of strangeand unexpected twists takes them to Free Country, a place that dates back amillennium, where children never grow old and are free from the abuse andtyranny of adults. But Free Country is failing, and what it needs is thestrength of five innately powerful children - including the young sorcererTimothy Hunter - to restore their uncanny world to what it once was. Thishardcover collects THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #1 and THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #2,written by Gaiman with cowriters Alisa Kwitney and Jamie Delano. A brand-newmiddle chapter written by DEAD BOY DETECTIVES novelist Toby Litt and drawn byartist Peter Gross (THE BOOKS OF MAGIC, THE UNWRITTEN) completes this compellingtale of ancient history, stolen dreams and lost children. It also features a newintroduction by Gaiman, plus new cover art by artist Mark Buckingham (FABLES,DEAD BOY DETECTIVES).

Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.

The Story of Hebrew explores the extraordinary hold that Hebrew has had on Jews and Christians, who have invested it with a symbolic power far beyond that of any other language in history. Preserved by the Jews across two millennia, Hebrew endured long after it ceased to be a mother tongue, resulting in one of the most intense textual cultures ever known. Hebrew was a bridge to Greek and Arab science, and it unlocked the biblical sources for Jerome and the Reformation. Kabbalists and humanists sought philosophical truth in it, and Colonial Americans used it to shape their own Israelite political identity. Today, it is the first language of millions of Israelis. A major work of scholarship, The Story of Hebrew is an unforgettable account of what one language has meant and continues to mean.

Continued from ARCANA ANNUAL BOOKS OF MAGIC (1994) #1. In the conclusion of the monumental Vertigo Annuals event, the plans of the strange children of Free Country come to fruition and the fate of that mystical land is decided. The children of the Vertigo titles will all be changed by their experiences...and one will not return.

This book takes the reader to the epicentre of the consumer world. There are adventures with money, with food, with consumer desirables, with sex. Gap polo necks, Ben & Jerry's, Nintendos, Fiat Puntos and other brand names are featured.

In the book "The Story of the Crusades," E. M. Wilmot-Buxton retells and describes the most famous events from the crusades. This book revolves around the rise of Islam to the adventures of Bohemond and Richard the Lionheart to the ultimate fall of Constantinople. It is centered around faith, belief, righteousness, and other virtues to embrace.

In 1988, the World Health Organization launched a twelve-year campaign to wipe out polio. Thirty years and several billion dollars over budget later, the campaign grinds on, vaccinating millions of children and hoping that each new year might see an end to the disease. But success remains elusive, against a surprisingly resilient virus, an unexpectedly weak vaccine and the vagaries of global politics, meeting with indifference from governments and populations alike. How did an innocuous campaign to rid the world of a crippling disease become a hostage of geopolitics? Why do parents refuse to vaccinate their children against polio? And why have poorly paid door-to-door healthworkers been assassinated? Thomas Abraham reports on the ground in search of answers.

In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, "Like Beauty," evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth. Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his future readers, "It avails not, neither time or place . . . I am with you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.

Humankind has taken a fateful journey into space . . . A vast generation ship hurtles away from a violent, troubled Earth to settle a distant planet orbiting an alien star. Those who set out on this journey are long-since dead. Those who will arrive at their destination have yet to be born. For those who must live and die in the cold emptiness between the stars, there is only the claustrophobic permanence of non-being. Life lived in unending stasis. Then the unthinkable happens: two souls €" August and Celeste €" rebel. And from the fruit of their rebellion comes a new and powerful force which will take charge of the ship's destiny. Journey into Space is science fiction at its most classic and beguiling: timeless, vast in scope and daring in execution. €~One of the most inventive and original writers around' Sunday Mirror €~Litt is equally adept at building tension and coming up with a haunting phrase. Perhaps most impressive of all, though, is the richness of his imagination. He doesn't quail at taking big risks and possesses the talent to bring them off' Daily Telegraph

An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.