This is where the dragons went. They lie, not dead, not asleep, but dormant. And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. This is the eighth 'Discworld' novel.

The Eye of the World and its sequels in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series show the extent to which one can go with a traditional fantasy framework, with added gusto. Stock elements are abound: a reluctant hero--in fact five humble village folk--plucked from wholesome obscurity to fight dark powers; an eternal evil enemy who can be defeated but not destroyed, until the end of the world, which is fast approaching; a mysterious sisterhood with vast powers and who love to manipulate thrones and kingdoms from the shadows (think of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune series); a ferocious battle-hardened warrior race (echoes of the Fremen of Dune , or the Haruchai of the Thomas Covenant novels).

Jordan didn't become a bestselling author merely by mixing up traditional ingredients; a master storyteller, he ingeniously gives unusual twists to these conventional fantasy elements. He also excels in the descriptive and narrative skills needed to create a detailed and coherent imaginary world. The many lands he portrays are vast in scope and contain amazingly varied countries and peoples, while retaining the inner coherence needed to make them satisfying places for a fantasy fan to roam around in. However, Jordan's writing never attains the subtlety or sophistication of, say, George RR Martin and there are some annoying stylistic tics: he seems unable to introduce a female character without commenting on her neckline and thereafter has them forever smoothing their dresses.

To his publisher's credit, Jordan's books are fortunate among fantasy novels in not having covers that look like an explosion of a teenager's bedroom. The absence of such lurid artwork is, perhaps, part of their appeal. -- David Pickering

It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien. At this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and a book inscribed with words: Don't Panic.

What if the Dark Lord won? An acclaimed epic commercial fantasy comes to the UK for the first time.

Taking a cynical look at the horror genre, this book features Crowley and Aziraphale, two friends who attempt to prevent the prophesised Armageddon. When the Antichrist is born they divert him from his original home at the American Embassy to Tadfield, where he grows into an unkempt individual.

[Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years]Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years BY Maguire, Gregory(Author)Hardcover

Striking debut novel with all the cynicism, realism and punch the fantasy genre has been missing.

Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's outrageous The Eyre Affair puts you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.

Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre --and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.

Fforde is endlessly inventive: his heroine's utter unconcern about the strangeness of the world she inhabits keeps the reader perpetually double-taking as minor certainties of history, literature and cuisine go soggy in the corner of our eye. The audacity of the premise and its working out provides sudden leaps of understanding, many of them accompanied by wild fits of the giggles. This is a peculiarly promising first novel. -- Roz Kaveney

The second volume in Robin Hobb's internationally bestselling Farseer series, now reissued in gorgeous new livery.

Return to the world of the Liveships Traders and journey along the Rain Wild River in the second instalment of high adventure from the author of the internationally acclaimed Farseer trilogy.

Zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. This title seeks to serve as an inventive fantasy and a meditation on the many uses of the mind.

The Gunslinger is a haunting figure, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own. In his first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, Roland encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and faces an agonising choice between damnation and salvation as he pursues the Man in Black.