Shelfology Book Pairing

by George R. R. Martin

THE BOOK BEHIND THE FOURTH SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO. Here is the fourth book in the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and become a modern masterpiece in the making. A FEAST FOR CROWS After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it’s not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes . . . and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors. A GAME OF THRONES • A CLASH OF KINGS • A STORM OF SWORDS • A FEAST FOR CROWS • A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

Is a Novel

by Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd is a novel by 19th century English novelist Thomas Hardy, published in 1874. The title is apt, as the life of the book's heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, living in the quiet rural village of Weatherbury is indeed disrupted by the "madding crowd". After shunning the first man to love her, the shepherd Gabriel Oak, she is courted by two others: the lonely and repressed farmer Boldwood, and the charming but faithless Sergeant Troy. The role of fate is clearly established, with each twist and turn in the book being more luck than the choice of one of the characters. The book is widely seen as Hardy's first masterpiece