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Fantasy

Fantasy from timeless classics to modern bestsellers. Epic and high fantasy includes J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree. Myth and folklore inspire Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Piranesi bring magic into English history and a strange endless house, while Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Michael Ende's The Neverending Story and Richard Adams's Watership Down are classics for every age. For readers who want other worlds, and the best way in.

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Fantasy

Epic & High Fantasy

Big invented worlds with their own histories, magic and wars. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion tells the ancient legends behind The Lord of the Rings; Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind follows the making of a legendary wizard; Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree is a stand-alone epic of queens and dragons. Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass, set among the djinn of 18th-century Cairo, and Simon Jimenez's The Spear Cuts Through Water show how varied the genre has become. Classics like Michael Ende's The Neverending Story and Richard Adams's Watership Down complete a shelf for readers who like long, immersive stories.

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Fantasy

Urban & Contemporary Fantasy

Contemporary fantasy brings the impossible into the everyday world we know. In Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, Nora Seed, at the lowest point of her life, finds herself in a library between life and death, where every book lets her live one of the lives she might have had if she had made different choices. It is a gentle, hopeful novel about regret, possibility and what makes a life worth living, and a favourite with book clubs. More modern fantasy will join this shelf; see Fantasy for epic, mythic and historical fantasy.

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Fantasy

Mythic & Folklore Fantasy

Fantasy rooted in myths, legends and old stories. Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles retells the Iliad through the love between Achilles and Patroclus. S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass draws on Middle Eastern tales of djinn, and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell revives English magic in the age of Napoleon. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion builds a mythology of its own, while Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree and Simon Jimenez's The Spear Cuts Through Water take folklore in new directions. For readers who love the feel of an old legend told anew.

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Fantasy

Historical Fantasy

Historical fantasy places magic inside a real historical period. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell imagines England during the Napoleonic Wars, when two magicians revive English magic and lend it to the war effort, in a long, witty novel full of footnotes and fairy lore. S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass begins in 18th-century Cairo, where a young con artist accidentally summons a djinn warrior and is drawn into a hidden magical city. For readers who love history and magic in equal measure. See Fantasy for more.

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Winnie-the-Pooh

By A. A. Milne , Ernest H. Shepard

Winnie-the-Pooh gathers ten linked stories about a bear of modest intellect, his friend Christopher Robin, and the animals who share a forest in southern England. Pooh hunts for honey, Piglet confronts imagined monsters, Eeyore endures his gloom, and a small party sets off to find the North Pole. A. A. Milne wrote the tales in the 1920s for his young son, and E. H. Shepard's drawings gave the characters their lasting look. Everyday worries, friendship and muddled logic become gentle comedy. It is among the most durable books for kids ever published, and adults often notice a second layer of wordplay and affectionate observation of human nature. This profile covers the 1992 Puffin paperback.

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Piranesi

By Susanna Clarke

Piranesi lives in the House, an apparently endless world of classical halls, monumental statues, birds, clouds, and seawater. He maps its spaces, predicts its dangerous tides, cares for its dead, and records his discoveries in journals. His only regular companion is the Other, a sharply contrasting figure who treats the House as the possible repository of secret knowledge. When signs suggest that another living person has entered this world, Piranesi begins examining inconsistencies in his records and gaps in his memory. What starts as an account of solitary exploration gradually becomes a mystery about identity, captivity, trust, and the uses of knowledge. Susanna Clarke combines a fantastical setting with the investigative momentum of a psychological mystery, making the narrator’s careful observations both the substance of the world and the means by which its hidden history can be recovered.

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