Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Featured Author: Lev Grossman

Author Lev Grossman was no stranger to writing when his first book came out in 1997.  His parents are the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman, and his twin brother is the author Austin Grossman. In addition to writing fiction, Lev Grossman is also the book critic at Time magazine, and has been published in many other periodicals, including  the Believer, the New York Times, Wired, and Salon. His second book, Codex, became an international bestseller in 2004, and he has really hit his stride with the publication of the fantasy fiction Magicians Trilogy, which began in 2009.

The Magicians Trilogy is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a high school senior obsessed with a series of fantasy novels set in a land called Fillory. Upon his admittance to an exclusive college of magic, Quentin discovers that Fillory is real. George R.R. Martin called The Magicians "thoroughly adult, his narrative dark and dangerous and full of twists"; Patrick Rothfuss said "[m]ost people will like this book. But there’s a certain type of reader who will enjoy it down to the bottoms of their feet"; and Cory Doctorow said it "may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I’ve read this century". The series is considered to be dark urban fantasy.


Codex [eAudio]
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons. Enlisting the help of passionate medievalist Margaret Napier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery of the codex-to understand its significance to his wealthy clients, and to decipher the seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and an obsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in the dark hours of the night.


Magicians Trilogy

The Magicians [eBook, eAudio]
Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery. But magic doesn't bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would. After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning. But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined. Psychologically piercing and dazzlingly inventive, The Magicians, the prequel to the New York Times bestselling book The Magician King and the #1 bestseller The Magician's Land, is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real world-where good and evil aren't black and white, and power comes at a terrible price.


The Magician King [eBook]
Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to discover that Fillory—a fictional utopia—was actually real. But even as a Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring. Accompanied by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off—only to somehow wind up back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they’d hoped. As the pair struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, Quentin is forced to rely on Julia’s illicitly learned sorcery as they face a sinister threat in a world very far from the beloved fantasy novels of their youth.


The Magician's Land [eBook, eAudio]
Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him. Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory--but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

*book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted
  

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