In a wondrous parallel world where witches soar the skies and Ice Bears rule the frozen North, one special girl is destined to hold the fate of the universe in her hands. When Lyra Belacqua becomes the keeper of the Golden Compass, she discovers that her world and all those beyond are threatened by the secret plans of Ms. Coulter. With the help of Lord Asriel and a group of unlikely allies ready to stand at her side, Lyra embarks on an extraordinary...

"Richly illustrated with images from Art Spiegelman's work, Maus Now gathers together many of contemporary culture's leading critics, authors, and academics on the radical achievement and innovation of Maus more than forty years since its first publication. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists, and it is hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture. Maus has shaped the fields...

A young girl is destined to liberate her world from the grip of the Magisterium, which represses people's ties to magic and their animal spirits known as daemons. Based on author Philip Pullman's beloved trilogy.

Covers writers who have made significant contributions to British, Irish, and Commonwealth literature from the fourteenth century to the present day. Includes in-depth critical and biographical analysis.

Critical studies of major young-adult writers. Entries include biographical information, critical analysis, and bibliographies of key primary and secondary works.

"The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be, " Paul Nurse writes with delight at life's richness and a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. With What Is Life? he delivers a brief but powerful work of popular science in the vein of Carlo...

"The hotly anticipated first novel by lauded playwright and The Wire TV writer Kia Corthron, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter sweeps American history from 1941 to the twenty-first century through the lives of four men, two white brothers from rural Alabama, and two black brothers from small-town Maryland, whose journey culminates in an explosive and devastating encounter between the two families. On the eve of America's entry into World War II,...