The Eye Of The Stone

When he is pulled into another world called Timmra, thirteen-year-old Jackson finds he must fight the horrible monster Baen and arbitrate a mounting struggle between the Timran and Yakonan peoples.

Can you kill the dungeon before it kills you?

When he is pulled into another world called Timmra, thirteen-year-old Jackson finds he must fight the horrible monster Baen and arbitrate a mounting struggle between the Timran and Yakonan peoples.

In the twelfth century AD, Venice is little more than an agglomeration of small islands snatched from the muddy tides. The magnificent city-lagoon of Venice, the rich and powerful Serene Republic, is yet to be born. Here, in this northern backwater, a group of artisans have proven themselves to be unrivalled in an art form that produces works of such astounding beauty that many consider it mystical in nature and think its practitioners possessed of otherworldly gifts. They are glassmakers. Presciently aware of the power they wield and the role they will play in the Venice of the future, the Venetian glassmakers inhabit a world of esoteric practices and secret knowledge that they protect at all costs. Into this world steps Edgardo D’Arduino, a cleric and a professional copyist. Edgardo’s eyesight has begun to waver—a curse for a man who makes his living copying sacred texts. But he has heard stories, perhaps legends, that in Venice, city of glassmakers, there exists a stone, the lapides ad legendum, that can restore one’s sight. However, finding men who have knowledge of this wondrous stone proves almost impossible. After much searching, Edgardo meets a mysterious man who offers him a deal: he will lead him to the makers of the lapides ad legendum in exchange for Edgardo’s stealing a secret Arabic scientific text that is kept in the abbey where Edgardo lodges. When a series of horrific crimes shakes the cloistered world of the glassmakers, Edgardo realizes that there is much more at stake than his faltering eyesight. Equal parts The Name of the Rose and The Da Vinci Code, Roberto Tiraboschi’s English-language debut is a gripping historical thriller and a magnificent recreation of Venice in the Middle Ages.

When Jackson Cooper is suddenly sucked into another world, he must find the courage to fight an evil monster before it destroys everything in its path! Even on his birthday, nothing is going right for Jackson Cooper. His friends think he’s a wimp for not biking down a steep hill, and his father, who’s always in a bad mood since he lost his job, is acting weirder than normal. To top it off, Jackson has to babysit his little sister. The year is off to a rough start. To take his mind off his bad luck, Jackson decides to go on a walk through the woods but gets caught in a storm. While taking shelter in a nearby cave, Jackson pulls a peculiar stone from the wall—and is suddenly transported to another world! The inhabitants of this strange new place called Timmra believe that Jackson is the chosen one, a promised gift from their god to protect them from a beast bent on ending the universe. But can Jackson overcome his fears in time to save the Timmrans, or is he truly the wimp his friends think he is?

"These 'stone' poems by Karen Craigo are reminiscent of W. S. Merwin's deep image poems or Vasko Popa's surrealist 'pebble' poems. But Craigo does Merwin and Popa one better. She manages to create and sustain a complex and shifting personal mythos without sacrificing the mystery and evocative force of the focusing image. Popa's 'pebbles' chanted a mean, gutteral, one-syllable song, but Craigo's 'stones' belt out whole operas. A brilliant debut."--George Looney

The definitive collection of nonfiction—from war reporting to literary criticism to the sharpest political writing—from the “legend of American letters” (Vanity Fair) Robert Stone was a singular American writer, a visionary whose award-winning novels—including Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach, and Damascus Gate—earned him comparisons to literary lions ranging from Samuel Beckett to Ernest Hemingway to Graham Greene. Stone had an almost prophetic grasp of the spirit of his age, which he captured with crystalline clarity in each of his novels. Of course, he was also a sharp and brilliant observer of American life, and his nonfiction writing is revelatory. The Eye You See With—the first and only collection of Robert Stone’s nonfiction—was carefully selected by award-winning novelist and Stone biographer Madison Smartt Bell. Divided into three sections, the collection includes the best of Stone’s war reporting, his writing on social change, and his reflections on the art of fiction. This is an extraordinary volume that offers up a clear-eyed look at the twentieth century and secures Robert Stone’s place as one of the most original figures in all of American letters.