Showing results by author "Terry Pratchett" in All Categories

'Look after the dead,' said the priests, 'and the dead will look after you.' Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when, like Teppic, you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country rather earlier than expected, and your treasury is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. He'd had the best education money could buy of course, but unfortunately the syllabus at the Assassin's Guild in Ankh-Morpork did not cover running a kingdom and basic financial acumen....

Rincewind, inept wizard and reluctant hero, has found himself magically stranded on the Discworld's last continent. It's hot. It's dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one believes in any more. Practically everything that's not poisonous is venomous. But it's the best bloody place in the world, all right? And in a few days, it will die. The only thing standing between the last continent and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, and he can't even spell wizard. Still...no worries, eh?

Vampires have come to Lancre, but they're not what you'd expect. Sure, they drink blood and view humans as dinner, but they're modern and sophisticated. They've got style and fancy waistcoats. And they're not a bit afraid of garlic. The Magpyr family are out of the casket and want a bite of the future. But they haven't met the neighbours yet. Between them and Lancre stand a coven of four - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat and young Agnes - and they don't take kindly to murderous intruders....

In the 'fantasy' universe of the phenomenally bestselling Discworld series, everything runs on magic and common sense. The world is flat and million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten. Our world seems different - it runs on rules, often rather strange ones. Science is our way of finding out what those rules are. The appeal of Discworld is that it mostly makes sense, in a way that particle physics does not.

The Royal Bank is facing a crisis, and it's time for a change of management. There are a few problems that may arise with the job.... The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire - there's something nameless in the cellar and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. Meanwhile, people actually want to know where the money's gone. It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, that life is not necessarily a long one. He's about to be exposed as a fraud, but if he's lucky the Assassins' Guild might get him first.

Johnny Maxwell and his friends have to do something when they find Mrs Tachyon, the local bag lady, semi-conscious in an alley...as long as it's not the kiss of life.But there's more to Mrs Tachyon than a squeaky trolley and a bunch of dubious black bags. Somehow she holds the key to different times, different ears - including the Blackbury Blitz in 1941. Suddenly now isn't the safe place Johnny once thought it was as he finds himself caught up more and more with then...

The acclaimed Science of Discworld centred on an original Pratchett story about the Wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fiction narrative about Big Science. In The Science of Discworld II our authors join forces again to see just what happens when the wizards meddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity on Earth. London is replaced by a dozy Neanderthal village.

Sell the cemetery? Over their dead bodies.... Not many people can see the dead (and not many would want to). Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And he's got bad news for them: the council want to sell the cemetery as a building site. But the dead aren't going to take it lying down... especially since it's Halloween tomorrow.

Women belong in the kitchen - everyone knows that. Not in jobs, pubs or indeed trousers, and certainly not on the front line. Nonetheless, Polly Perks has to become a boy in a hurry if she wants to find her missing brother in the army. Cutting off her hair and wearing the trousers is easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape takes more time. There's a war on. There's always a war on, and Polly and her fellow raw recruits are suddenly in the thick of it. All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee.

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth - but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind...

DEATH IS MISSING: PRESUMED...ER...GONE....which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm far, far away, a tall dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There's a harvest to be gathered in.

It's 2045-2059. After the cataclysmic upheavals of Step Day and the Yellowstone eruption humanity is spreading farther into the Long Earth, and society, on a battered Datum Earth and beyond, continues to evolve. Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang, lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a normal life in New Springfield - they even adopt a child - but it seems they have been guided there for a reason.

Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength. This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad. As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land. There will be a reckoning.

There is a hint of Armageddon in the air. According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the Armies of Good and Evil are massing, the four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witchfinders are getting ready to Fight the Good Fight.

Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic, but life isn't exactly what she thought it would be. She expects spells and magic - not chores and ill-tempered goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this? And Tiffany will find that she needs her magic more than ever, to fight off the insidious, disembodied creature that is pursuing her. This time, neither Mistress Weatherwax (the greatest witch in the world) nor the fierce, six-inch-high Wee Free Men can protect her. In the end, it will take all of Tiffany's inner strength to save herself.

Most of us grow up having always known to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly, some of these things are now beginning to be forgotten. Legends, myths, and fairy tales: our world is made up of the stories we told ourselves about where we came from and how we got there. It is the same on Discworld, except that beings which on Earth are creatures of the imagination - like vampires, trolls, witches, and possibly, gods - are real, alive and in some cases kicking on the Disc.

In the beginning, there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet.... That's the old story everyone knows and loves (even if they don't really believe it). But now the Carpet is home to many different tribes and peoples, and there's a new story in the making: the story of Fray, sweeping a trail of destruction across the Carpet. The story of power-hungry mouls - and of two Munrung brothers, who set out on an adventure to end all adventures when their village is flattened.

Poor Mr. Swimble is having a bad day. Rabbits are bouncing out of his hat, pigeons are flying out of his jacket and every time he points his finger, something magically appears - cheese sandwiches, socks...even a small yellow elephant on wheels! It's becoming a real nuisance - and he's allergic to rabbits. His friends at the Magic Rectangle can't help, but the mysterious vacuum cleaner he saw that morning may have something to do with it....

Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time. And now she's enlisted in the army, and searching for her lost brother. But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.