Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman (1960 - ) is a wonder of the literary world. He is a breaker of categories, because his writing is respectful of the possible audience, whether that audience is 8 or 18 or 48 or 98, male or female or somewhere in-between, die-hard fantasy reader or Common Reader or suspicious of words on a page, human or alien or somewhere in-between.
Gaiman is profoundly interested in myth and fairy tales, archetypes and companions of the id, the vast range of fantastic literature (folktales to ghost stories to pulp thumpers). He can be funny or precisely delicate or heart-wrenching or sly or terrifying to such an extent that there is no place to hide from the monsters. He has worked in graphic literature (the Sandman series), children's books, young adult fiction, fantasy, film, and the art of the audiobook. I mention the audio in particular because he often reads his own works, and once you hear him you are amazed that such an acting ability is from the same writer.
Neverwhere (illustrated by Chris Riddell)
Neverwhere (illustrated by Chris Riddell)
National Bestseller
Selected as one of NPR’S Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of All Time
The #1 New York Times bestselling author’s dark classic of modern fantasy, beautifully illustrated for the first time by award-winning artist Chris Riddell, and featuring the author’s preferred text and his Neverwhere tale, “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.”
Published in 1997, Neil Gaiman’s first novel, Neverwhere, heralded the arrival of a major talent. Over the years, various versions have been produced around the world. In 2016, this gorgeously illustrated edition of the novel was released in the UK. It is now available here, and features strikingly atmospheric, painstakingly detailed black-and-white line art by Chris Riddell, one of Gaiman’s favorite artistic interpreters of his work.
Richard Mayhew is a young London businessman with a good heart whose life is changed forever when he stops to help a bleeding girl—an act of kindness that plunges him into a world he never dreamed existed. Slipping through the cracks of reality, Richard lands in Neverwhere—a London of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth. Neverwhere is home to Door, the mysterious girl Richard helped in the London Above. Here in Neverwhere, Door is a powerful noblewoman who has vowed to find the evil agent of her family’s slaughter and thwart the destruction of this strange underworld kingdom. If Richard is ever to return to his former life and home, he must join Lady Door’s quest to save her world—and may well die trying.