29 Best books for 3 year olds

A captivating historical novel, Pope Joan is an international best-seller. Set in the brutal Dark Ages, a time when women were viewed as the root of sin, this novel tells the remarkable tale of one of history’s greatest controversies. Denied the priesthood by society’s rules, young Joan seizes her opportunity to join a monastery when she assumes her murdered brother’s identity and takes the name John Anglicus. Putting her brilliant mind to good use, she excels as a scholar and healer. Joan eventually finds her way to Rome, where the lures of passion and politics threaten to expose her secret. But Joan rises above even these obstacles to achieve the pinnacle of Catholic power-the Papacy.

A completely re-imagined epic of the man known as Robin Hood from multi-award-winning, bestselling author Stephen R. Lawhead–now with the complete trilogy in one volume.

For centuries, the legend of Robin Hood and his band of thieves has captivated imaginations. Now the familiar tale takes on new life as it boldly relocates to the dark forests of the Welsh countryside.

Hunted like an animal by Norman invaders, Bran ap Brychan, heir to the throne of Elfael, has abandoned his father’s kingdom and fled to the greenwood. There, in the primeval forest of the Welsh borders, danger surrounds him–for this woodland is a living, breathing entity with mysterious powers and secrets. Bran must find a way to make it his own if he is to survive and become King Raven.

From deep in the forest, Bran, Will Scarlet, and Friar Tuck form a daring plan for deliverance, knowing that failure means death for them all–and the dreams of the oppressed people of Wales.

This acclaimed trilogy (Hood, Scarlet, Tuck) conjures up an ancient past and holds a mirror to contemporary realities. Prepare yourself for an epic tale that dares to shatter everything you thought you knew about Robin Hood.

• Epic historical fantasy that reimagines the Robin Hood legend in medieval Wales
• Includes the complete King Raven Trilogy:
  • Book One: Hood
  • Book Two: Scarlet
  • Book Three: Tuck
• Total length: over 300,000 words

Inspired by The Hobbit, and begun in 1937, The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy that Tolkien created to provide “the necessary background of history for Elvish tongues.” From these academic aspirations was born one of the most popular and imaginative works in English literature.

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in the trilogy, tells of the fateful power of the One Ring. It begins a magnificent tale of adventure that will plunge the members of the Fellowship of the Ring into a perilous quest and set the stage for the ultimate clash between powers of good and evil.

In this splendid, unabridged audio production of Tolkien’s great work, all the inhabitants of a magical universe–hobbits, elves, and wizards–step colorfully forth from the pages. Rob Inglis’ narration has been praised as a masterpiece of audio.

The eagerly anticipated next novel from the bestselling author of The Alienist is available from Simon & Schuster Audio unabridged on MP3 CD and as an audio download!

With the historical storytelling brilliance of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, the hugely bestselling author of The Alienist writes a bounding epic: The Legend of Broken is an action-packed, multi-charactered tale of a medieval clash of cultures.

In Caleb Carr’s fascinating tale of the kingdom of Broken, legend meets history, science defies all expectation, and one noble soldier struggles to save a fortress city besieged by enemies within and without.

“Amy Landon’s lively narration unites present-day Ohio and Perceforest, a fairy-tale realm, in this immersive reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty universe.” – AudioFile Magazine

USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story. Featuring Arthur Rackham’s original illustrations for The Sleeping Beauty, fractured and reimagined.

“A vivid, subversive and feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where implacable destiny is no match for courage, sisterhood, stubbornness and a good working knowledge of fairy tales.” –Katherine Arden

It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tordotcom

“Choo narrates this richly complex novel herself, her gorgeous writing delivered in a voice that is deep and precise and lovely, both British and not quite. Her tone and words transport us…” — San Francisco Chronicle

This program is read by the author.

A sweeping historical audiobook about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.

Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.

As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths wracks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren’s increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.

Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love. But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive audiobook is the intimate coming of age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.

Praise for The Night Tiger:

“A work of incredible beauty…Astoundingly captivating and striking in its portrayal of love, betrayal, and death, The Night Tiger is a transcendent story of courage and connection.” — Booklist, starred review

“Choo has written a sumptuous garden maze of a novel that immerses readers in a complex, vanished world.” — Kirkus, starred review

From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis’s Carroll’s beloved classic.

When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance?

In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings–and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice’s mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late–and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.

Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is “After Alice.”

Inspired by The Hobbit, and begun in 1937, The Lord of the Rings is the saga of the great War of the Ring. As he crafted the alphabets, languages, and landscapes of Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the most popular and imaginative works in English literature.

The Two Towers is the second volume of The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship has been forced to split up. Frodo and Sam must continue alone towards Mount Doom, where the ring must be destroyed. Meanwhile, at Helm’s Deep and Isengard, the first great battles of the War of the Ring take shape.

In this splendid, unabridged audio production of Tolkien’s great work, all the inhabitants of a magical universe–hobbits, elves, and wizards–step colorfully forth from the pages. Rob Inglis’ narration has been praised as a masterpiece of audio.

How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves–even if we are unsure of who we are?

That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho’s profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well–or hardly at all. Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.

“An elegant performance by narrator Barrie Kreinik recounts the life of Ariadne…This production, with its outstanding narration, makes the classic story new again. Kreinik is the perfect voice for Ariadne, a noble young woman who bravely stands up for her values.” — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

A mesmerizing debut novel for fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe.

Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up greeting the dawn from her beautiful dancing floor and listening to her nursemaid’s stories of gods and heroes. But beneath her golden palace echo the ever-present hoofbeats of her brother, the Minotaur, a monster who demands blood sacrifice.

When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives to vanquish the beast, Ariadne sees in his green eyes not a threat but an escape. Defying the gods, betraying her family and country, and risking everything for love, Ariadne helps Theseus kill the Minotaur. But will Ariadne’s decision ensure her happy ending? And what of Phaedra, the beloved younger sister she leaves behind?

Hypnotic, propulsive, and utterly transporting, Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne forges a new epic, one that puts the forgotten women of Greek mythology back at the heart of the story, as they strive for a better world.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

“Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne is a shimmering tapestry of two sisters bound by deceit and the shadows of family history…With a fresh voice and keen insight, Saint adds flesh and bone to an ancient myth, drawing the reader into an uneasy world of ever-afters.” –Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger

The final volume in Robin Hobb’s popular Rain Wilds fantasy series, Blood of Dragons completes the story of the dragons, their keepers, and their quest to find the lost city of Kelsingra–and the mythical silver wells that the dragons need to survive.

Can Tintaglia and the Elderlings unlock the secrets of the ancient city? Or are they doomed to extinction?

The world of Robin Hobb’s Rain Wilds series has been praised by Booklist as “one of the most gripping settings in modern fantasy,” and Publishers Weekly called the Rain Wilds books “a meticulously realized fantasy tale” and “a welcome addition to contemporary dragon lore.”

From the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale.

A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt’s long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.

Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux.

While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village–thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe.

Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

They wondered if they would ever find their way back–back to the village, back to a life of meaning, back to each other.

Corfu, 1946–In a poor Greek community, ten-year-old Marco is perhaps the poorest of them all. But it wasn’t always that way. His grandmother once worked for the royal family where Marco’s mother played alongside young Prince Phillip himself. Now Greece is on the brink of civil war, and Marco’s mother still clings to the desperate hope that somehow the royal family will save her own.

As the war turns deadlier, Greece’s Queen Frederica takes a defiant stand against the communists, announcing that she will save her country’s most innocent by opening children’s villages. When the communist partisans erect camps of their own, children are ripped from their mothers’ arms; entire villages are emptied.

Young Katerina has been best friends with Marco for as long as she can remember, cementing their bond by stealing scraps from her family’s table to sneak to him. But when the communists reach their village, loyalties are tested as devastating secrets threaten to emerge. Katerina and Marco are separated just before her family flees on foot. At their final goodbye, Katerina and Marco promise to find their way back to the village, and to each other. This haunting childhood vow launches events that will take decades to unravel.

Set among Corfu’s picturesque lanes, hamlets, and villas where kings, villagers, and saints all walk the same cobblestone paths, Where the Wandering Ends reminds us of the tenacity of those who have lost everything and the enduring power of home.

“[A] magically crafted story combining history and mythology.” –Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author

• A heart-wrenching yet hopeful story that spans decades: from post-World War II to early 2000s
• Stand-alone novel
• Book length: approximately 112,000 words

The living cannot be allowed to infect the dead.

Adam Binder has lost what matters most to him. Having finally learned the true identity of the warlock preying on his family, what was supposed to be a final confrontation with the fiend instead became a trap that sent Adam’s beloved Vicente into the realm of the dead, where none living are meant to be.

Bound by debt, oath, and love, Adam blazes his own trail into the underworld to get Vicente back, and to end the threat of the warlock once and for all. But the road to hell is paved with far more than good intentions. Demons are hungry, and ghosts are relentless, and what awaits Adam in the underworld is nothing he is prepared to face.

If that weren’t enough, Adam has one more thing he must do if he and Vicente are to return to the world of the living: find the lost heart of Death herself.

A brilliantly crafted modern tale from acclaimed film critic and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill–part Neil Gaiman, part Guillermo Del Toro, part William S. Burroughs–that charts the lives of two boys from their star-crossed childhood in the realm of magic and mystery to their anguished adulthoods

There is another world than our own–one no closer than a kiss and one no further than our nightmares–where all the stuff of which dreams are made is real and magic is just a step away. But once you see that world, you will never be the same.

Dreams and Shadows takes us beyond this veil. Once bold explorers and youthful denizens of this magical realm, Ewan is now an Austin musician who just met his dream girl, and Colby, meanwhile, cannot escape the consequences of an innocent wish. But while Ewan and Colby left the Limestone Kingdom as children, it has never forgotten them. And in a world where angels relax on rooftops, whiskey-swilling genies argue metaphysics with foul-mouthed wizards, and monsters in the shadows feed on fear, you can never outrun your fate.

Dreams and Shadows is a stunning and evocative debut about the magic and monsters in our world and in our self.

In this imaginative novel rooted in the rich soil of early-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, beloved New York Times bestselling author Gregory Maguire twins an origin legend of the famous Nutcracker with the life of Drosselmeier, the toymaker who carves him.

Gregory Maguire’s novels have been called “bewitching,” “remarkable,” “extraordinary,” “engrossing,” “amazing,” and “delicious.” Having brought his legions of devoted readers to Oz in Wicked, Wonderland in After Alice and Dickensian London in Lost, Maguire now takes us to the Black Forest of Bavaria and Munich of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffman. Hiddensee recreates the backstory of the Nutcracker, reimaging how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how it magically guided an ailing little girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a snowy Christmas Eve. It also brings to life the mysterious godfather Drosselmeier–the ominous, canny, one-eyed toymaker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky’s ballet–who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter.

But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism a migrating strain of a Hellenic mystery-cult, and ponders a profound question: how a person who is abused by life, short-changed and challenged, can access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless. Ultimately, Hiddensee, offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized on the eve of a winter holiday, has something precious to share.

“Terrific. A wild ride….I loved it. It hooked me and I couldn’t put it down.”
–Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy

“Brom is that rare breed: a person who is skilled in more than one area of artistic expression. Here’s hoping that he will continue to share his dark and often beautiful dreams with us for many years to come.” –Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of Eragon

Acclaimed author and artist Brom raised eyebrows and pulse rates with The Child Thief, his grim, brilliantly audacious, gorgeously illustrated reimagining of the Peter Pan legend. So what does this innovative fantasist do for an encore? He tinkers darkly with the beloved mythology of Santa Claus.

Set in Appalachia, Krampus the Yule Lord is a twisted fairytale about a failed West Virginia songwriter who gets ensnared on Christmas Eve in an eternal war between a not-so-saintly Saint Nick and his dark enemy Krampus, aka Black Peter, an ancient trickster demon. Krampus the Yule Lord is Gregory Maguire (Wicked) meets Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) in the realm of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, as Clive Barker (Mr. B. Gone) works his dark sorcery from the shadows. Once again featuring Brom’s chillingly beautiful artwork throughout, Krampus the Yule Lord is a feast of wonder straight from the kitchen of Sweeney Todd.

“Simply the most exciting book on black folklore and culture I have ever read.” –Roger D. Abrahams

Mules and Men is the first great collection of black America’s folk world. In the 1930’s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her “native village” of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, “big old lies,” and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal’and preserve’a beautiful and important part of American culture.

Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist and playwright whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She is also the author of Tell My Horse, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, and Mule Bone.

Ruby Dee, a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, starred on Broadway in the original productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious, and was featured in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. She is also an award-winning author and the producer of numerous television dramas.

Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters–a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.

Six months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom, a realm of mystery and darkness beyond our own. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now, word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past–including one Colby considered a friend–have resurfaced to exact their revenge.

As darkness gathers around the city, Colby sifts through his memories desperate to find answers that might save him. With time running out, and few of his old allies and enemies willing to help, he is forced to turn for aid to forces even darker than those he once battled.

Following such masters as Lev Grossman, Erin Morgenstern, Richard Kadrey, and Kim Harrison, C. Robert Cargill takes us deeper into an extraordinary universe of darkness and wonder, despair and hope to reveal the magic and monsters around us . . . and inside us.

In the stunning conclusion to the Elements of Cadence duology, A Fire Endless finds the delicate balance between the human and faerie realm threatened by Bane, the spirit of the North Wind, whose defeat can only come through fire, song, and heart-rending sacrifice.

East and West. Humans and Spirits. Breccans and Tamerlaines. The Isle of Cadence has always held itself and its residents in a tenuous balance. But now Bane, the spirit of the North Wind, has pushed everyone and everything in his path off-kilter in a bid to claim dominion over all.

In the West, Adaira struggles to adjust to the more brutal, bitter ways of life among the Breccans. Striving to find her place in the clan, she swiftly realizes that it just might be the last role she desires to hold. And while magic blooms effortlessly for the Breccans in the west, the spirits continue to suffer beneath Bane’s harsh power, felt in every gust of wind.

In the East, Jack is adrift without Adaira until he sings to the ember-weak fire spirits, acquiring a dangerous mission he never expected. One that is destined to lead him westward. Likewise, Torin and Sidra are consumed by a new mystery as sickness spreads first amongst the crops, and then to the people of the Tamerlaine clan. While Sidra desperately searches for a cure, Torin dares to strike a bargain with the spirits–a precarious folly anytime, but especially now as the days grow darker.

With the island falling further out of balance, humans and spirits alike will need to join together to face Bane, and Jack’s gift with the harp will be called upon once more. Yet no one can challenge the North Wind without paying a terrible price, and the sacrifice required this time may be more than Jack, Adaira, Torin, and Sidra can bear to pay.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

A Mirror Mended is the next installment in USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow’s Fractured Fables series!

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can’t handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White’s Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she’s desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen’s poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com Imprint.

#1 International Bestseller

“With lush world building and lyrical prose, A River Enchanted feels like the echo of a folktale from a world right next to our own.” –Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf

House of Earth and Blood meets The Witch’s Heart in Rebecca Ross’s brilliant first adult fantasy, set on the magical isle of Cadence where two childhood enemies must team up to discover why girls are going missing from their clan.

Jack Tamerlaine hasn’t stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university. But when young girls start disappearing from the isle, Jack is summoned home to help find them. Enchantments run deep on Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armor, and the smallest cut of a knife can instill fathomless fear. The capricious spirits that rule the isle by fire, water, earth, and wind find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home. Adaira, heiress of the east and Jack’s childhood enemy, knows the spirits only answer to a bard’s music, and she hopes Jack can draw them forth by song, enticing them to return the missing girls.

As Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together, they find they make better allies than rivals as their partnership turns into something more. But with each passing song, it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than they first expected, and an older, darker secret about Cadence lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.

With unforgettable characters, a fast-paced plot, and compelling world building, A River Enchanted is a stirring story of duty, love, and the power of true partnership, and marks Rebecca Ross’s brilliant entry on the adult fantasy stage.

Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours

A poisoned apple and a monkey’s paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan’s wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away–the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder–are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.
Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother’s basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans.
Reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.

Program contains music composed specifically for the audiobook by Billy Hough and his bandmates in GarageDogs. Billy Hough says: “The original piece ‘A Wild Swan’ was written as a gift to Michael, due to my incredibly strong reaction to hearing these beautiful stories for the first time. I enlisted the brilliant Lili Taylor to alternate the stories with me, and wrote a series of short pieces of music, for their eventual inclusion on this album. I wanted to use the music to illustrate the tension between the ancient and the modern, much in the same way Michael has done in the stories themselves.”

A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire’s Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series.

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.

When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to “Be Sure” before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines–a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.

But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…

A standalone Wayward Children story containing all-new characters, and a great jumping-on point for new listeners.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com

Soon to be a streaming series!

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, a tale playful, profound, and rife with mayhem and mischief–one of ten classic Gaiman works repackaged with elegant original watercolor art by acclaimed artist Henry Sene Yee

When Fat Charlie’s dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie “Fat Charlie.” Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can’t shake that name, one of the many embarrassing “gifts” his father bestowed–before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie’s life. Because Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the stranger who appears on Charlie’s doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie.

Neil Gaiman journeys deep into myth to brings us a tale playful, profound, and rife with mayhem and mischief–an audacious and inspired story of family, luck, deceit, and an unusual legacy that illuminates the divine in our humanity. Not to mention a lime.

“Awesomely inventive…. When you take the free-fall plunge into a Neil Gaiman book, anything can happen and anything invariably does.” —Entertainment Weekly

Another fantasy audiobook from Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, which began with the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Every Heart a Doorway.

Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third audiobook in McGuire’s Wayward Children series, returns listeners to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children in a contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the “real” world.

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.)

If she can’t find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests…

A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do.

Warning: May contain nuts.

“Narrator JD Jackson addresses his listener as “bro” in this decidedly contemporary retelling of the classic saga…His brilliant performance captures all the artistry, wit, and immediacy of this fresh translation, and breathes new life into what for most has been a literary fossil.” — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the much-buzzed-about novel The Mere Wife

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf–and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world–there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history–Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation.

A Macmillan Audio production from MCD x FSG Originals

“Brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand.” –Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker

“The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualizes the tale.”–Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

“A full master of the epic fantasy.”
—Tulsa World

One of the world’s most acclaimed fantasists, New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb returns to the world of her popular “Tawny Man” trilogy with Dragon Haven–the second book, following Dragon Keeper (“Imaginative, literate, and compassionate from first page to last” —Booklist) in an epic adventure about the resurgence of dragons in a world that both needs and fears them. Hobb, whose Soldier Son Trilogy (Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic) has won raves from critics, fans, and peers alike, returns to the Rain Wilds with Dragon Haven, and readers of Raymond Feist, Terry Brooks, and Lois McMaster Bujold will eagerly follow.

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.

No matter the cost.

PRAISE FOR EVERY HEART A DOORWAY

“Seanan McGuire has long been one of the smartest writers around, and with this novella we can easily see that her heart is as big as her brain. We know this story isn’t true, but it is truth.” — Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series (TV’s True Blood)

“Seanan McGuire once again demonstrates her intimate knowledge of the human heart in a powerful fable of loss, yearning and damaged children.” — Paul Cornell, author of London Falling and Witches of Lychford