Richard Pepen comes to the campus of Hampden College in Vermont to escape the featureless, dusty California of his childhood, and to further his studies of ancient Greek. In this tightly woven liberal arts community there are five other students of Papen's chosen subject, all of them intimidatingly remote from the rest of the student body and fiercely loyal to their professor and mentor, the stiffly eccentric Julian Morrow. Each of his students has surrendered control of their college curriculum entirely to him. Papen makes a similar sacrifice and progresses from these external rituals and loyalties to a much deeper, more disturbing involvement in Dionysian rites and murder. The consuming effects of his guilt and atonement occupy the latter sections of the novel.

On 28th-century Earth, the rulers have decreed that while all humans have the right to live there, there is no longer any room for animals on the planet. Jewel, a secret "arkist"--someone who works to save animals--travels to the mysterious planet Moss, where she will encounter seemingly inscrutable aliens, a lost human colony, and a portal to another dimension.

As the year 2000 approaches, a group of women who were friends in college find themselves unprepared to defend womankind from a global misogynist conspiracy. Their only hope seems to find a friend of theirs named Sophy, who has mysteriously vanished.

In a future society where men and women are separated by a dividing wall, a single gate provides the only way to cross between masculine and feminine cultures, which have been growing increasingly divergent.

The residents of Newholme--a matriarchal, largely agrarian planet--have several reason to be concerned. The planet's six moons will soon reach a rare alignment, which is fabled to bring disaster, and there is also an impending visit from the Questioner II, a high-tech machine which judges the relative merit of entire worlds and has the capacity to mete out severe punishment to those it finds flawed.

In 2063, when a massive energy crisis has forced the U.S. to revert almost entirely to coal and wood for fuel, a reclusive millionaire, tormented by his own inadequacies, embarks on a space trip to discover a new source of fuel.

Notions of death and its effects, on both victims and survivors, are explored and revised as a group of people on an alien planet face mortality in a manner that they have never experienced. Written late in her life, this is another classic work by Tiptree.

Before there was Bilbo, Frodo, or Gandalf, there were the Elder Days, when the Dark Lord Morgoth's obsession with the magical gems called the Silmarils drove a wedge between the worlds of elves and men. THE SILMARILLION is essential reading for fans of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy.

The action really picks up in this middle volume of the internationally renowned classic epic THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Fellowship, the band of nine companions whose task it was to bring down the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying his Ring of Power, has been sundered. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas race to rescue the hobbits Merry and Pippin, kidnapped by orcs, and receive help from an unexpected quarter. Meanwhile, Frodo and his servant Sam continue on toward Mordor, accompanied by their unreliable guide, Gollum, who himself once bore the Ring that Frodo now carries. Will Gollum lead them safely to Mordor, or will he betray them for the chance to take Sauron's Ring back for himself? And will Frodo be able to bear up under the increasing burden of the Ring--or will he succumb to its evil?

The action really picks up in this middle volume of the internationally renowned classic epic THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Fellowship, the band of nine companions whose task it was to bring down the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying his Ring of Power, has been sundered. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas race to rescue the hobbits Merry and Pippin, kidnapped by orcs, and receive help from an unexpected quarter. Meanwhile, Frodo and his servant Sam continue on toward Mordor, accompanied by their unreliable guide, Gollum, who himself once bore the Ring that Frodo now carries. Will Gollum lead them safely to Mordor, or will he betray them for the chance to take Sauron's Ring back for himself? And will Frodo be able to bear up under the increasing burden of the Ring--or will he succumb to its evil?

The action really picks up in this middle volume of the internationally renowned classic epic THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Fellowship, the band of nine companions whose task it was to bring down the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying his Ring of Power, has been sundered. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas race to rescue the hobbits Merry and Pippin, kidnapped by orcs, and receive help from an unexpected quarter. Meanwhile, Frodo and his servant Sam continue on toward Mordor, accompanied by their unreliable guide, Gollum, who himself once bore the Ring that Frodo now carries. Will Gollum lead them safely to Mordor, or will he betray them for the chance to take Sauron's Ring back for himself? And will Frodo be able to bear up under the increasing burden of the Ring--or will he succumb to its evil?

This is another collection of Tolkien's previously unpublished tales that depict events leading up to and during those described in "The Silmarillion".

This 1937 fantasy is the prequel, or "prelude" to the classic epic trilogy THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Bilbo Baggins is the hobbit of the title: a short, round, and hairy-footed creature fond of small comforts and his rural home. What he doesn't like (or at least thinks he doesn't like) is adventure, but that's just what he gets when a wizard and several dwarves show up on his doorstep, eat him out of house and home, and induce him to join them on a perilous mission to steal a dragon's treasure. Along the way, he picks up a golden ring with the power to turn the wearer invisible; this ring will turn out to be central to the later volumes. While THE LORD OF THE RINGS is a serious epic about the nature of good and evil, written in highly formal language and intended for adults, this earlier work is considerably lighter in tone and clearly directed toward a younger audience, having sprung out of the stories that Tolkien used to tell his own children. However, that does not and has not prevented adults the world over from enjoying THE HOBBIT.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS is regarded by many to be the most important and influential work of fantasy of the 20th century. It generated the fantasy novel industry practically single-handedly, inspiring a multitude of novels concerning elves and dwarves on quests to conquer ultimate evil despite overwhelming odds. Although Tolkien had always intended for THE LORD OF THE RINGS to be published as a single volume, its division into a trilogy created the iconic format for epic fantasy literature. In the first book of the series, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, the Dark Lord Sauron, an utterly evil and powerful being, is stirring again after a long period of dormancy. He will soon dominate all of Middle-earth if he is not stopped. The key to Sauron's defeat is Frodo, nephew and heir to Bilbo Baggins--the hero of THE HOBBIT. The magic ring that Bilbo picked up on his adventures is in fact the One Ring, into which Sauron deposited much of his power. If the Ring is destroyed in the volcano at the heart of Sauron's realm of Mordor, Sauron too will be destroyed. Unfortunately, the longer someone bears the Ring, the stronger grows its ability to corrupt the bearer and those around him. As Frodo and his companions begin the long journey to Mordor, will they be able to keep their Fellowship intact and their purpose pure…or will the Ring's evil nature triumph over them all?

The action really picks up in this middle volume of the internationally renowned classic epic THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Fellowship, the band of nine companions whose task it was to bring down the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying his Ring of Power, has been sundered. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas race to rescue the hobbits Merry and Pippin, kidnapped by orcs, and receive help from an unexpected quarter. Meanwhile, Frodo and his servant Sam continue on toward Mordor, accompanied by their unreliable guide, Gollum, who himself once bore the Ring that Frodo now carries. Will Gollum lead them safely to Mordor, or will he betray them for the chance to take Sauron's Ring back for himself? And will Frodo be able to bear up under the increasing burden of the Ring--or will he succumb to its evil?