A Song of Ice and Fire 03 - A Storm of Swords

A Storm of Swords is the third of seven planned novels in A Song of Ice and Fire, an epic fantasy series by American author George R.R. Martin.  A Storm of Swords won the 2001 Locus Award, the 2002 Geffen Award for Best Novel and was nominated for the 2001 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Significantly, it was the first novel in the series to be nominated for the Hugo Award, one of the two most prestigious awards in science fiction and fantasy publishing.

Music of a Life

Makine (Dreams of My Russian Summers) is a Russian emigre who writes in the language of his adopted France, but retains a poetic intensity of vision that seems peculiarly Russian. His latest is an extraordinarily compressed brief novel, but it is a novel not a novella in scope nonetheless. It begins as the narrator, waiting for a train to Moscow somewhere in the wilds of Siberia, meets a mysterious musician, Alexe Berg, and is told his somber life story. Berg, a son of the intelligentsia growing up in the Stalin-shadowed '30s, is about to make his debut as a concert pianist, in 1940, when his parents are arrested, and he barely escapes, taking refuge with relatives in the Ukraine.

A Song of Ice and Fire 02 - A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin

A Clash of Kings is the second novel in American author George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Published in 1998 it continues the story from the previous novel A Game of Thrones, telling three roughly connected stories from the viewpoint of several main characters. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer.

Life and Times of Michael K: A Novel

First published in 1983 and winner of the Booker Prize. Set in a turbulent South Africa, a young gardener decides to take his mother away from the violence towards a new life in the abandoned countryside, but finds that war follows wherever he goes. From the author of DUSKLANDS and IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY.

Ubik

Written in 1969, Ubik is a futuristic science-fiction novel that transcends genre fiction. Dick's novel is dense with literary substance which has been integrated into a comprehensive universe of his own imagining.The novel takes place in 1992, in a world where nearly every convenience (even the opening of doors) costs money. In this society, the dead and the living interact with one another.Ubik integrates a series of themes – on the surface it is a light sci-fi read; by the first chapter, however, the book is infused, although not laden, with important themes and "literary significance."