Hannibal Rising

Thomas Harris

 

HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERS IN ALL OF LITERATURE.

AT LAST THE EVOLUTION OF HIS EVIL IS REVEALED.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck.

He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him.

Hannibal’s uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle’s beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki.

Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal. With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France.

But Hannibal’s demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn.

He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death’s prodigy.

Interview with the Vampire

This sumptuously mounted adaptation of Anne Rice’s bestselling novel brings her most intriguing character, the vampire Lestat, to life in the person of matinee idol Tom Cruise. Rice partisans initially balked upon hearing that Cruise had been cast, but his charismatic presence strengthened the picture and disarmed most of his critics. Brad Pitt plays Louis, a sensitive young man who reveals to a reporter (Christian Slater) the story of his troubled, 200-year existence as a vampire, beginning with his induction into that unnatural fraternity by the courtly Lestat. The film, which travels to Europe and back over the course of centuries, is most compelling in its exploration of the alternative family formed by Lestat, Louis, and child vampire, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst in an impressive performance). As directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), Interview is slow going at times, but it features a terrific cast and possesses an eerily hypnotic quality that will appeal to horror-movie lovers in general and Rice fans in particular

The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 sequel to The Godfather is an audacious tour de force believed by many critics and movie fans to be superior to the original film — and with good reason. Coppola resisted the urge to make a conventional sequel; instead he crafted a film with dual story lines that bookend the events of the first Godfather. In one narrative Al Pacino returns as Michael Corleone, now deeply entrenched as the leader of a Mafia “family” whose influence extends to the lavish casinos of Eisenhower-era Las Vegas. Locked in a desperate struggle with shrewd Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (played brilliantly by veteran acting teacher Lee Strasberg), Michael also clashes with those closest to him, including wife Kay (Diane Keaton) and brother Fredo (John Cazale). The alternate plot features Robert De Niro as Michael’s father, Vito — the character played by Brando in the first movie — who is seen as a young man coming to New York from Sicily and locking horns with a fellow countryman, the neighborhood crime boss. Coppola develops the parallel stories with equal vigor and intensity, although the showdown between Michael and Roth, quite properly, forms the film’s unforgettable climax. More atmospheric and introspective than The Godfather, Part II is less a slam-bang gangster film than a Greek tragedy in contemporary settings. Michael Corleone grapples with the consequences of his decision to lead the family “business,” sacrificing his most intimate relationships — and even his very soul — to the compulsive desire to retain power and destroy his enemies. With their dual-story concept, Coppola and co-writer Mario Puzo make certain we realize that Michael’s fate was, to a large extent, sealed by the choices his father made decades before. Thirty years after it was made, this extravagant, epochal sequel remains vital and gripping, and it may well be the greatest film Coppola has ever made.

Count of Monte Cristo

Alexander Dumas

Dashing young Edmond Dantès has everything. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, is about to become the captain of a ship, and is well liked by almost everyone. But his perfect life is shattered when he is framed by a jealous rival and thrown into a dark prison cell for 14 years.

The greatest tale of betrayal,adventure, and revenge ever written, The Count of Monte Cristo continues to dazzle readers with its thrilling and memorable scenes, including Dantès’s miraculous escape from prison, his amazing discovery of a vast hidden treasure, and his transformation into the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo—a man whose astonishing thirst for vengeance is as cruel as it is just.

Zombieland

Two men have found a way to survive a world overrun by zombies. Columbus is a big wuss — but when you’re afraid of being eaten by zombies, fear can keep you alive. Tallahassee is an AK-totin’, zombie-slayin’ badass whose single determination is to get the last Twinkie on earth. As they join forces with Wichita and Little Rock, who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem, they will have to determine which is worse: relying on each other or succumbing to the zombies.

Extraordinary Voyages (Library of Wonder): Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas

In the nineteenth century, French author Jules Verne awed readers with astounding adventures that transported them to the ends of the Earth, plunged them into the ocean’s depths, and dropped them into mysterious subterranean realms. Dubbed Voyages Extraordinaries, these unique blends of action, adventure, and science fiction offered prescient glimpses into the future and a level of scientific speculation unprecedented in imaginative fiction.

 

 The three novels collected here represent some of Verne’s most innovative and entertaining adventures. Around the World in Eighty Days is the chronicle of irrepressible adventurer Phileas Fogg, whose wager to circle the globe involves him in one cliff-hanging escapade after another. Journey to the Center of the Earth tells of intrepid explorers who discover a subterranean world of prehistoric marvels and menaces at the Earth’s core. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, scientist hero Captain Nemo investigates the exotic mysteries of the deep in his space-age submarine, the Nautilus. Two of these novels (Journey and 20,000 Leagues) are presented here with new English translations, and all three are newly illustrated with the incomparable fantasy art of Nate Pride.

District 9

Thirty years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa’s District 9 as the world’s nations argued over what to do with them.

Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens’ welfare — they will receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens’ awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA.

The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe, contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable — he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Ostracized and friendless, there is only one place left for him to hide: District 9.

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit and the Complete Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King/Boxed Set

J. R. R. Tolkien is best known to most readers as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, regarded by Charles Moorman in Tolkien and the Critics as “unique in modern fiction,” and by Augustus M. Kolich in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as “the most important fantasy stories of the modern period.” From 1914 until his death in 1973, Tolkien drew on his familiarity with Northern and other ancient literatures and his own invented languages to create not just his own story, but his own world: Middle-earth, complete with its own history, myths, legends, epics and heroes.

Synopsis

A matched four-volume boxed set containing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, complete with maps and cover illustrations from the motion pictures

The Final Destination

The Final Destination

On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O’Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori, and their friends, Janet and Hunt, to leave… escaping seconds before Nick’s frightening vision becomes a terrible reality. Thinking they’ve cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one–in increasingly gruesome ways–Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination.

Inheritance the fourth book

A yet-to-be named book will be the fourth and final book in the Inheritance Cycle and will be written by Christopher Paolini. He has written three other books in the cycle and they are as follows in order; Eragon, Eldest, and the newest installment, Brisingr.

The Inheritance Cycle was originally intended to be a trilogy, but Paolini has stated that during writing, the length of the third book grew, and the book was split into two parts to be published separately, as two different books. Because of this, many plot elements originally intended for the third book will likely be moved to the fourth book.

No official release date for the fourth book has been given