Lev Grossman

As a senior in high school Quentin Coldwater became preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. After graduating from college and being admitted into a highly exclusive, secret society of magic in upstate New York, he makes a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined for his childhood dream...

"Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him. Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and...

"Collum, a brilliantly gifted young knight from the provinces, arrives at Camelot two weeks after the Battle of Camlann, hoping to compete for a spot on the Round Table. But he finds the city empty, King Arthur dead, and the Table destroyed. The remaining six knights aren't the mighty heroes, the legends, like Lancelot and Gawain and Tristram and Galahad. These are the survivors, a grab-bag of minor oddball knights from the margins--Sir Palomides,...

Kate's humdrum life is transformed when her eccentric Uncle Herbert brings her a colossal locomotive train, the Silver Arrow, as her eleventh birthday gift, leading her and her younger brother on a mysterious quest.