Most Popular Books by Gene Wolfe

Hailed as "one of the literary giants of SF" by the Denver Post, Gene Wolfe has repeatedly won the field''s highest honors, including the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy awards. Peace is Gene Wolfe''s first full-length novel, a work that shows the genius that later flourished in such acclaimed works as The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Book of The New Sun. Originally published in 1975, Peace is a spellbinding, brilliant tour de force of the imagination. The melancholy memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, an embittered old man living out his last days in a small midwestern town, the novel reveals a miraculous dimension as the narrative unfolds. For Weer''s imagination has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality, transcending even death itself. Powerfully moving and uncompromisingly honest, Peace ranks alongside the finest literary works of our time. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The long awaited sequel to Gene Wolfe''s four-volume classic, The Book of the New Sun. We return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, as he leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test, to become the legendary New Sun or die. The strange, rich, original spaceship scenes give way to travels in time, wherein Severian revisits times and places which fill in parts of the background of the four-volume work, that will thrill and intrigue particularly all readers of the earlier books. But The Urth of the New Sun is an independent structure all of a piece, an integral masterpiece to shelve beside the classics, one itself. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The best stories of a long and influential career by “quite simply a superb writer” (The Washington Post Book World)

On Blue''s Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe''s four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story continues in In Green''s Jungles and Return to the Whorl. "By any standard, Wolfe''s beautifully composed, meditative, thrilling, and tricky-beyond-belief ''science fantasy'' is a work of the highest art."--The Washington Post Book World At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This omnibus of two acclaimed novels is the story of Latro, a Roman mercenary who was fighting in Greece when he received a head injury that deprived him of his short-term memory but gave him in return the ability to see and converse with the supernatural creatures, the gods and goddesses, who invisibly inhabit the classical landscape. Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story''s hold on readers is powerful indeed.

Gene Wolfe''s Return to the Whorl is the third volume, after On Blue''s Waters and In Green''s Jungles, of his ambitious SF trilogy The Book of the Short Sun . . . It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Horn has traveled from his home on the planet Blue, reached the mysterious planet Green, and visited the great starship, the Whorl and even, somehow, the distant planet Urth. But Horn''s identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Perhaps Horn and Silk are now one being. Return to the Whorl brings Wolfe''s major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, to a strange and seductive climax. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction work of the 1980s, offered his second collection of short fiction in 1990 to universal acclaim. This is a hefty volume of over 30 unforgettable stories in a variety of genres-- SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream-many of them offering variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales, and including two stories, "The Cat" and "The Map," which are set in the universe of his New Sun novels. Wolfe''s deconstructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, and resonant. This embarrassment of literary riches is a must for all Gene Wolfe fans, and anyone who loves a good tale beautifully told.

Gene Wolfe may be the single best writer in fantasy and SF of his generation. From The Book of the Long Sun to The Book of the New Sun series, to his impressive short fiction oeuvre. Innocents Aboard gathers fantasy and horror stories from the last decade that have never before been in a Wolfe collection. Highlights from the twenty-two stories include "The Tree is my Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas, "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story, "The Walking Sticks," a darkly humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance, and "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

He lives deep in the forest in the time of King Wenceslas, in a village older than record. The young man''s hero-worship of the charming highwayman, Wat, is tempered by growing suspicion of Wat''s cold savagery, and his fear of the sorcerous powers of Mother Cloot is tempered by her kindness. He must decide which of these powers to stand by in the coming battle between Good and Evil that not even his isolated village will be able to avoid. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Free Live Free," said the newspaper ad, and the out-of-work detective Jim Stubb, the occultist Madame Serpentina, the salesman Ozzie Barnes, and the overweight prostitute Candy Garth are brought together to live for a time in Free''s old house, a house scheduled for demolition to make way for a highway. Free drops mysterious hints of his exile from his homeland, and of the lost key to his return. And so when demolition occurs and Free disappears, the four make a pact to continue the search, which ultimately takes them far beyond their wildest dreams. This is character-driven science fiction at its best by a writer whom, at the time of its first publication, the Chicago Sun-Times called "science fiction''s best genuine novelist." At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

After becoming the first Caldé in more than a century, Silk gets a glimpse into the nature of the Whorl and of his own purpose.

Hailed as "one of the literary giants of science fiction" by The Denver Post, Gene Wolfe is universally acknowledged as one of the most brilliant writers the field has ever produced. Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best fiction collection, Storeys from the Old Hotel contains thirty-one remarkable gems of Wolfe''s short fiction from the past two decades, most unavailable in any other form. Storeys from the Old Hotel includes many of Gene Wolfe''s most appealing and engaging works, from short-shorts that can be read in single setting to whimsical fantasy and even Sherlock Holmes pastiches. It is a literary feast for anyone interested in the best science fiction has to offer. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe''s most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly. Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume: The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim. Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I''ve read in years!" The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny. "One of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century." -- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lake of the Long Sun is the second volume in the Book of the Long Sun series from science fiction and fantasy master Gene Wolfe It is the far future, and the giant spaceship, The Whorl, has travelled for forgotten generation towards its destination. Lit inside by the artificial Long Sun, The Whorl is so huge that you can see whole cities in the sky. And now the gods of The Whorl begin to intervene in human affairs. A god speaks to Patera Silk, a clergyman at work in the schoolyard of his church. Silk must go on a quest to save his church and his people. "Stylistic excellence and topnotch storytelling."--Library Journal At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

There Are Doors is the story of a man who falls in love with a goddess from an alternate universe. She flees him, but he pursues her through doorways-interdimensional gateways-to the other place, determined to sacrifice his life, if necessary, for her love. For in her world, to be her mate . . . is to die. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Latro, a mercenary soldier, lost his memory after a head wound and must continually rediscover his identity. However, he is now able to converse with supernatural creatures which is both a triumph and a danger.

Gene Wolfe''s In Green''s Jungles is the second volume, after On Blue''s Waters, of his ambitious SF trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun. It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest from his home on the planet Blue in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Now Horn''s identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft in orbit that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien inhumi. There, he led a band of mercenary soldiers, answered to the name of Rajan, and later became the ruler of a city state. He has also encountered the mysterious aliens, the Neighbors, who once inhabited both Blue and Green. He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. At some point, he died. His personality now seemingly inhabits a different body, so that even his sons do not recognize him. And people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. In Green''s Jungles is Wolfe''s major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, building toward a strange and seductive climax. "Wolfe''s narrative glows, rich and seductive as ever."--Kirkus Reviews At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Latro arrives in Egypt where he struggles to regain his memory. Unable to remember anything when he wakes up, Latro writes down each day''s events and reads his journal anew each morning.

An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap? In The Land Across, Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing until the very end, and after. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013