Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of - a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, and pale girls in black velvet. Richard Mayhew is a young businessman who is about to find out more than he bargained for about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his safe and predictable life and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and yet utterly bizarre. There's a girl named Door, an Angel called Islington, an Earl who holds Court on the carriage of a Tube train, a Beast in a labyrinth, and dangers and delights beyond imagining...And Richard, who only wants to go home, is to find a strange destiny waiting for him below the streets of his native city. This title includes extra material exclusive to Headline Review's edition.

Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed.'") Coraline contents herself for weeks with exploring the vast garden and grounds. But with a little rain she becomes bored--so bored that she begins to count everything blue (153), the windows (21), and the doors (14). And it is the 14th door that--sometimes blocked with a wall of bricks--opens up for Coraline into an entirely alternate universe. Now, if you're thinking fondly of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you're on the wrong track. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is far darker, far stranger, playing on our deepest fears. And, like Roald Dahl's work, it is delicious. What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older)

The book’s narrator is a socially-awkward geek-in-training who, with the help of three old ladies and one 11 year-old girl down the block, tries to escape the darkness around and within him. Gaiman has said that this is his most personal work.

在《烟与镜》——这部盖曼平生第一部短篇作品集中，他凭借卓绝的想象力以及极致的描摹力，将平凡俗世瞬间点化为诡谲奇境。《我们可以给你批发价》，男人因为贪图批发价之蝇头小利，却无意启动了毁灭世界的暗语；而等到梦境绝断，人苏醒之后，《扫梦人》正在白日阔步穿行。 阅读《烟与镜》，犹如跟随作者步入一个全新的现实——它或为烟雾笼罩，同时却又触手可及——因为作者十足是一位戏法大师，信手便能为你构筑一座令人欲罢不能的文学世界：打开尘封的感官，感受怦然心动的一刻，梦想也从此游弋。

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack--who has already killed Bod's family. . . . Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his "New York Times" bestselling modern classic "Coraline." Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.