Books

Small Gods

Small Gods is one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, but it stands on its own, so readers do not need prior knowledge of the series to follow it. The book begins in a world where gods draw their strength from…

Witches Abroad

Witches Abroad begins with what sounds like a fairy tale correction and turns it into something far stranger. After a dying witch leaves Magrat Garlick both a wand and a responsibility, Magrat, Granny Weatherwax, and Nanny Ogg set out for…

Reaper Man

Reaper Man begins with one of Terry Pratchett’s best premises: Death is fired. The Auditors of Reality decide he has become too individual, too interested in humanity, and remove him from the job that holds a basic part of the…

Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures begins when the Discworld discovers cinema and, being Discworld, turns it into something far stranger and more dangerous than entertainment. The alchemists of Ankh-Morpork stumble into the magic of “moving pictures,” and the new clicks industry soon migrates…

Eric

Eric starts with a boy trying to do something dramatic and ending up with exactly the wrong kind of magic. Eric, a teenage would-be demonologist, wants the usual grand rewards from the universe: immortality, power, and romance. What he gets…

Guards! Guards!

Guards! Guards! begins in Ankh-Morpork, where unrest is always close to the surface and the city’s Night Watch has long since fallen into shabby irrelevance. At the center is Captain Sam Vimes, a weary, heavy-drinking watchman who has become far…

Pyramids

Pyramids begins with Teppic, the son of a ruler, trying to escape the rigid expectations of his birthplace by training as an assassin in Ankh-Morpork. That alone gives the book an unusual angle for Discworld: instead of dropping straight into…

Wyrd Sisters

Wyrd Sisters takes the familiar shape of a royal murder and turns it into something stranger, sharper, and much funnier. A king has been killed, his throne seized, and the rightful heir hidden away, which sounds like the beginning of…

Sourcery

Sourcery begins with the arrival of something Discworld’s wizards should never have wanted: a sourcerer, a wizard who is not merely skilled in magic but a source of it. Unseen University, already full of vanity, rivalry, and bad judgment, is…

Mort

Mort begins with a simple but wonderful idea: Death needs an apprentice. That apprentice is Mort, an awkward, well-meaning boy who is not much use to his family and seems ill-suited to ordinary life. When Death offers him a job…