Young men in a slum neighborhood resort to unorthodox methods to earn a living, manipulated like puppets by a cunning old colonel. Amidst this misery, an unfulfilled love story unfolds, along with a bloody struggle against those who steal sustenance and the corrupt within the police force. Yet, none of this extinguishes their fervent hopes of escaping the poverty-ridden alleys and entering a world of abundance and comfort. Along the way, a series of unexpected twists and turns determine the fates of these weary souls, scattering them into unimaginable destinies.

The geezers are back! The Old Geezers Vol 2 includes two new stories, featuring three septuagenarians who have been friends since childhood: Antoine, Emile, and Pierrot. In "The One Who Got Away", things aren’t looking so good for the Geezers… one of them’s in the hospital, the other’s been arrested, and the third one is dealing with leaky roofs, drowning sheep, and eggs he doesn’t approve of. Two new characters make their appearance in this book, and through their stories we are taken to shark-infested waters and treasure-hunting in the Pacific, to village fairs, rugby matches, broken hearts, and behavior unbefitting neighbors–which continues to this day. Thank goodness young Sophie and her puppets are around to keep these old men in check. And in "The Magician", peaceful country living consisting of leaky roofs, puppet shows, and drinks and arguments at the local tavern is disturbed when a rare species of grasshopper is discovered in a local field, and suddenly environmentalists, politicians, hunters, Big Pharma, union people, mushroom pickers and geriatric anarchists are all loudly fighting for what they believe is the right approach to things. In the midst of all this, one love story may be blooming in spite of a curse, another may be doomed for good and for poop, and questions of paternity arise yet again. The Old Geezers is an international bestseller, regularly topping the graphic novel bestseller lists across Europe — with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. Come find out why the geezers have won the hearts of so many...in this gorgeously illustrated, beautifully written graphic novel series.

A truly mind-boggling and fascinating A-Z of history's most eccentric thinkers. Filled to bursting with jaw-droppingly strange episodes from history, The Crackpot Compendium is a riotous tour of crackpot inventors, false prophets, quacks and pseudo-scientists, con-artists and impostors, and hundreds of other truly 'outside-the-box' thinkers. Discover stories of dinosaur espionage, earthquake-predicting plants and leech barometers, cat pianos and canine translation devices, immortal adventurers, cities spotted on the Moon and aliens living on the Sun. This colossal collection travels the world and across the millennia to take in telepathic Soviet circus clowns, Scottish abominable snowmen, Welsh prophets, ancient Chinese test pilots, invisible African mountains, and the aviator known as 'Wrong Way' Corrigan who accidentally flew backwards across the Atlantic. If you have ever wondered how to build a pigeon death-ray, start a snake cult with a hand-puppet, interrogate a houseplant or perform psychic surgery, The Crackpot Compendium will provide the answers (while also probably leaving you with a few new questions.)

A truly mind-boggling and fascinating A-Z of history's most eccentric thinkers. Filled to bursting with jaw-droppingly strange episodes from history, The Crackpot Compendium is a riotous tour of crackpot inventors, false prophets, quacks and pseudo-scientists, con-artists and impostors, and hundreds of other truly 'outside-the-box' thinkers. Discover stories of dinosaur espionage, earthquake-predicting plants and leech barometers, cat pianos and canine translation devices, immortal adventurers, cities spotted on the Moon and aliens living on the Sun. This colossal collection travels the world and across the millennia to take in telepathic Soviet circus clowns, Scottish abominable snowmen, Welsh prophets, ancient Chinese test pilots, invisible African mountains, and the aviator known as 'Wrong Way' Corrigan who accidentally flew backwards across the Atlantic. If you have ever wondered how to build a pigeon death-ray, start a snake cult with a hand-puppet, interrogate a houseplant or perform psychic surgery, The Crackpot Compendium will provide the answers (while also probably leaving you with a few new questions.)

Stormy Bay is a dying town nestled against an eerily placid ocean, and Ray Lilly is trapped in it. He can barely remember his name let alone his mission for the Twenty Palace society. Worse, he realizes that for some time now he's been living as a puppet, his body and mind under the complete domination of an unknown power. And that power can still seize control of Ray's body at any time, forcing him and the people around him to playact in nonsense stories that center around a mysterious boy and his monster dog. The town and its people shift and change, but only Ray seems to notice. He has no idea what sort of magic has imprisoned all these ordinary folks in Stormy Bay, but he does know he needs to get them, and himself, out. But that might mean crossing a line he has never crossed before. While Ray has certainly taken lives in his work for the society, it was always in self-defense or in the desperate moments before impending calamity. Can he bring himself to commit cold-blooded murder, even to save dozens of lives?

A LibraryReads pick! An Indie Next pick! Most anticipated from People Magazine, The Portalist, Nerd Daily, Page Six, Parade, Spokesman Review. Featured in: The New York Times, SFF Insiders, New Scientist, Nerd Daily, Reactor, Goodreads, IGN, and Gizmodo. A heart-wrenching standalone novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright follows an elder gay couple on an end-of-the-world road-trip. The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky.... Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over. On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how-impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough. Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes? Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave

A LibraryReads pick! An Indie Next pick! Most anticipated from People Magazine, The Portalist, Nerd Daily, Page Six, Parade, Spokesman Review. Featured in: The New York Times, SFF Insiders, New Scientist, Nerd Daily, Reactor, Goodreads, IGN, and Gizmodo. A heart-wrenching standalone novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright follows an elder gay couple on an end-of-the-world road-trip. The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky.... Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over. On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how-impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough. Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes? Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND INDIE BESTSELLER One of Buzzfeed's "Best Books of 2022"! An Indie Next Pick! A Locus Awards Top Ten Finalist for Fantasy Novel A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place in Under the Whispering Door, a delightful queer love story from TJ Klune, author of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The House in the Cerulean Sea. Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead. But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND INDIE BESTSELLER One of Buzzfeed's "Best Books of 2022"! An Indie Next Pick! A Locus Awards Top Ten Finalist for Fantasy Novel A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place in Under the Whispering Door, a delightful queer love story from TJ Klune, author of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The House in the Cerulean Sea. Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead. But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND INDIE BESTSELLER One of Buzzfeed's "Best Books of 2022"! An Indie Next Pick! A Locus Awards Top Ten Finalist for Fantasy Novel A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place in Under the Whispering Door, a delightful queer love story from TJ Klune, author of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The House in the Cerulean Sea. Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead. But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

You have to stomach the stark reality that Egypt's history isn't a sun-drenched parade of god-kings and golden barges, but a savage scramble over sand and skulls, where pharaohs stacked slaves like bricks for pyramids that mocked the masses from on high. "The History of Egypt" skips the gift-shop glamour; it gouges into the grit, from the predynastic butchers hacking heads for river gods to the Ptolemaic puppet-shows where Cleopatra bedded Romans to buy a few more years of borrowed throne. This is the unvarnished vein: a cradle of civilization that cradled corpses in catacombs, where the Nile's flood fed fields and famines in equal measure, and scribes spun spells to soothe the dead while the living toiled under taskmasters' whips. Crammed between the cartouches are the cuts they chisel out of tour guides: the Hyksos hordes who horse-whipped invaders into the delta, the Amarna heresy where Akhenaten axed old gods for his sun-freak cult, and the Roman rub-out of the last native dynasty that turned the pharaonic flame into a flickering lamp for Caesar's ego. No halo for the hieroglyph heroes who hoarded harvests while peasants picked flies from their gruel; just the brutal balance of how obelisks outlasted orphans, and mummification was less eternal life than elite embalming for the afterlife elite. Detractors decry it "doom-scrolling," but the ostraca and ossuaries opine otherwise: Egypt's enigma was empire etched in exploitation, a template for every throne-thief since. As 2025's sandstorms swallow sites amid climate chokeholds, why guzzle the glossy guidebook when the genuine grit grinds like grit in your teeth? This volume vaults no veiled virtues; it vents the vaulted vanities, tossing you the tomb trash to trash the tales before they tomb the truth. Plumb it if the past's pungency pulls you; pass if polished pageantry's your poison. The ankh dangles; grasp or ghost?

You have to stomach the stark reality that Egypt's history isn't a sun-drenched parade of god-kings and golden barges, but a savage scramble over sand and skulls, where pharaohs stacked slaves like bricks for pyramids that mocked the masses from on high. "The History of Egypt" skips the gift-shop glamour; it gouges into the grit, from the predynastic butchers hacking heads for river gods to the Ptolemaic puppet-shows where Cleopatra bedded Romans to buy a few more years of borrowed throne. This is the unvarnished vein: a cradle of civilization that cradled corpses in catacombs, where the Nile's flood fed fields and famines in equal measure, and scribes spun spells to soothe the dead while the living toiled under taskmasters' whips. Crammed between the cartouches are the cuts they chisel out of tour guides: the Hyksos hordes who horse-whipped invaders into the delta, the Amarna heresy where Akhenaten axed old gods for his sun-freak cult, and the Roman rub-out of the last native dynasty that turned the pharaonic flame into a flickering lamp for Caesar's ego. No halo for the hieroglyph heroes who hoarded harvests while peasants picked flies from their gruel; just the brutal balance of how obelisks outlasted orphans, and mummification was less eternal life than elite embalming for the afterlife elite. Detractors decry it "doom-scrolling," but the ostraca and ossuaries opine otherwise: Egypt's enigma was empire etched in exploitation, a template for every throne-thief since. As 2025's sandstorms swallow sites amid climate chokeholds, why guzzle the glossy guidebook when the genuine grit grinds like grit in your teeth? This volume vaults no veiled virtues; it vents the vaulted vanities, tossing you the tomb trash to trash the tales before they tomb the truth. Plumb it if the past's pungency pulls you; pass if polished pageantry's your poison. The ankh dangles; grasp or ghost?

A LibraryReads pick! An Indie Next pick! Most anticipated from People Magazine, The Portalist, Nerd Daily, Page Six, Parade, Spokesman Review. Featured in: The New York Times, SFF Insiders, New Scientist, Nerd Daily, Reactor, Goodreads, IGN, and Gizmodo. A heart-wrenching standalone novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright follows an elder gay couple on an end-of-the-world road-trip. The road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky.... Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they've experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they've ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, Don and Rodney are out of time. They're in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it's all over. On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how-impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals, and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough. Is it enough to burn bright if nothing comes from the ashes? Other TPG Books by TJ Klune The Cerulean Chronicles The House in the Cerulean Sea Somewhere Beyond the Sea The Green Creek Series Wolfsong Ravensong Heartsong Brothersong Standalones The Bones Beneath My Skin Under the Whispering Door In the Lives of Puppets We Burned So Bright Murmuration Into This River I Drown How to Be a Normal Person BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS The Extraordinaries Series The Extraordinaries Flash Fire Heat Wave At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.