The Dark Archive

A mysterious archive. A powerful enemy. And a cunning plan. Danger is part of the day job for a Librarian spy. So Irene’s hoping for a relaxing weekend. However, her jaunt to Guernsey proves no such thing. Instead of retrieving a rare book, she’s almost assassinated, Kai is poisoned and Vale barely escapes with his life. Then the attacks continue in London – targeting those connected with the Fae-dragon peace treaty. Irene knows she must stop the plot before the treaty fails. Or someone dies. But when Irene and friends are trapped underground, in a secret archive, things don’t look so good. Then an old enemy demands vengeance, and a shocking secret is revealed. Can Irene really seize victory from chaos? The Dark Archive is the seventh book in the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman. Genevieve is also the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Scarlet - which reimagines the tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but with vampires, mages and magic. . . Praise for the series: 'I absolutely loved this' - N. K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season 'Irene is a great heroine: fiery, resourceful and no one's fool' - Guardian 'Brilliant and so much fun. Skullduggery, Librarians, and dragons – Cogman keeps upping the ante on this delightful series!' - Charles Stross, author of the Merchant Princes series

Time-travelling, dimension-jumping, Librarian-spy Irene and dragon-prince Kai will have to team up with an unlikely band of misfits to pull off an amazing art heist—or risk the wrath of a dangerous villain with a secret island lair. A Librarian’s work is never done, and Irene is summoned to the Library. The world where she grew up is in danger of veering deep into chaos, and she needs to obtain a particular book to stop this from happening. Her only choice is to contact a mysterious Fae information-broker and trader of rare objects: Mr. Nemo. Irene and Kai make their way to Mr. Nemo’s remote Caribbean island and are invited to dinner, which includes unlikely company. Mr. Nemo has an offer for everyone there: he wants them to steal a specific painting from a specific world. But to get their reward, they will have to form a team, including a dragon techie, a Fae thief, a gambler, a driver, and the muscle. Their goal? The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, in an early twenty-first-century world, where their toughest challenge might be each other.

On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy—the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship. A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives—captivating and macabre in all the right ways—she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.

Dark archive: The purpose of a dark archive is to function as a repository for information that can be used as a failsafe during disaster recovery. Laura Mullen’s fourth collection is a sequence of beautifully interrelated poems that explores how to accurately represent the reality of change and loss. Mullen pinpoints what is at stake: the possibility of communication and connection—and the hope of intimacy. Invoking Wordsworth’s "I wandered lonely as a cloud," she pushes experiments in consciousness against their boundaries in an array of poetic forms. Poetic tropes are measured against natural phenomena as Mullen examines what "witness" might mean in the context of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the failures of capitalism to effect social justice, the murder of James Byrd in Texas, the personal loss of a mother figure, and a disintegrating love affair.

A former professor offers film critic Simon the chance of a lifetime—to write a book on one of the greatest long-lost comedians of the silent-film era, Tubby Thackeray. Simon is determined to find out the truth behind the jolly fat man's disappearance from film—and from the world. Tubby's work carries the unmistakable stamp of the macabre. People literally laughed themselves to death during his performances. Soon, wherever Simon goes, laughter—and a clown's wide, threatening grin—follow. Is Simon losing his mind? Or is Tubby Thackeray waiting for him to open the door back to the world? Ramsey Campbell has won a dozen British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards and three Bram Stoker Awards. A new Campbell novel is an opportunity to delight in the craftsmanship of an extraordinary writer. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Come for a visit in Bear Country with this classic First Time Book® from Stan and Jan Berenstain. After reading a scary book, Sister becomes afraid of the dark. Thankfully, Papa has some good ideas to help Sister conquer her fear. This beloved story is a perfect way to teach children about bravery and overcoming their fears.

A professional spy for a mysterious Library which harvests fiction from different realities, Irene faces a series of assassination attempts that threaten to destroy her and everything she has worked for. Irene is teaching her new assistant the fundamentals of a Librarian's job, and finding that training a young Fae is more difficult than she expected. But when they're the targets of kidnapping and assassination attempts, she decides that learning by doing is the only option they have left ... In order to protect themselves, Irene and her friends must do what they do best: search for information to defeat the overwhelming threat they face and identify their unseen enemy. To do that, Irene will have to delve deeper into her own history than she ever has before, face an ancient foe, and uncover secrets that will change her life and the course of the Library forever.

Eight-year-old Jack and his younger sister Annie find a magic treehouse, which whisks them back to an ancient time zone where they see live dinosaurs.