Written for J.R.R. Tolkien's own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when first published more than sixty years ago. Now recognized as a timeless classic with sales of more than 40 million copies worldwide, this introduction to Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the Wizard, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth tells of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.

The year is 878 and Wessex is free from the Vikings. Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now, as ‘The Lords of the North’ begins, he is disgusted by Alfred’s lack of generosity and repelled by the king’s insistent piety. He flees Wessex, going back north to seek revenge for the killing of his foster father and to rescue his stepsister, captured in the same raid. He needs to find his old enemy, Kjartan, a renegade Danish lord who lurks in the formidable stronghold of Dunholm. Uhtred arrives in the north to discover rebellion, chaos and fear. His only ally is Hild, a West Saxon nun fleeing her calling, and his best hope is his sword, with which he has made a formidable reputation as a warrior. He will need the assistance of other warriors if he is to attack Dunholm and he finds Guthred, a slave who believes he is a king. If Guthred is to rule Northumbria he needs Uhtred and Ragnar, the Dane who is Uhtred’s sworn brother. Guthred, though, is weak and yields to treachery...

In the third volume of The Lord of the Rings trilogy the good and evil forces join battle, and we see that the triumph of good is not absolute. The Third Age of Middle-earth ends, and the age of the dominion of Men begins.

As the dark forces of Mordor spread throughout Middle-earth, the fellowship forged to destroy the One Ring of power is broken, leaving Frodo Baggins and the stalwart Sarnwise Gamgee alone to return the ring to Mount Doom -- and to face former ringholder Gollum. Meanwhile, the rest of the fellowship comes up against the growing power of the renegade wizard Sarnman, while huge armies build in preparation for the first great battles of the War of the Ring.

From the land of Mordor, an evil darkness creeps across Middle-earth. Armies of men and elves and dwarves have been raised in futile efforts to combat this evil. Great wizards have been unable to check it. But in the peaceful, far-off Shire, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins holds a ring that may be the key to defeating Mordor. This stirring saga of epic evil and heroic courage begins with a fellowship joined in a desperate quest that may be the only hope for restoring goodness and light to the land.

Although The Silmarillion takes place in the same imaginary world as J.J.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and was originally published four years after the author's death and over two decades after the former book, it is set much earlier, in the First Age of the World. The tales and the book which reads as a fusion between a story collection and historical chronicle, are a matter of legend even to the characters of The Lord of the Rings: In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him Tolkien wrote the heart of this material very early in his career, and continued to work on it throughout his life. It fell to his son, Christopher Tolkien, to edit it into book form, and such proved the unquenchable public appetite that he subsequently oversaw 12 volumes of The History of Middle-Earth. This edition features 20 highly evocative colour plates by Ted Nasmith, themselves worth the price of admission, while reinforcing the sense of a historical work are genealogical tables, an extensive index, appendix and colour map. Far removed from the genial style of The Hobbit, this is Tolkien at his most formal, his prose austere, poetically beautiful, his storytelling capturing the epic scale, high drama and melancholy wonder of myth. These stories of elves and heroes and old gods are quite literally the foundation of the entire modern fantasy-publishing revival, and are therefore essential reading. --Gary S. Dalkin -