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Lev Grossman is an American journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the fantasy series, The Magicians.

The series has been published in thirty countries, and adapted into a Syfy TV show that ran for five seasons.

Born in Massachusetts to parents who were both English professors, Lev found himself drawn to books from an early age.

He attended Harvard College, where he graduated with a degree in literature, and also attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature at Yale University, although he never finished his dissertation.

Passionate about reading throughout college and graduate school, Lev moved to New York City to become a full time fiction author.

He first started by writing the Warp (1997), a standalone, before making his breakthrough with the The Magicians.

Lev currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, three children and a Siamese cat.

More about Lev Grossman

Genres: Fantasy / SF, Mystery, Thriller

Born: 1969

United States

Website: https://levgrossman.com/

Non Series

  • Warp (1997)
  • Codex (2004)

Novellas

  1. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)

The Magicians

  1. The Magicians (2009)
  2. The Magician King (2011)
  3. The Magician's Land (2014)
  4. The Magicians: Alice's Story (2019)
  5. The Magicians: The New Class (2020)

The Silver Arrow

  1. The Silver Arrow (2020)
  2. The Golden Swift (2022)
Non Series

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Warp

Twenty-something Hollis Kessler languishes in a hopelessly magician-less world (with the exception of a fleet-footed nymph named Xanthe) not too far from where he graduated college. His friends do, too. They sleep late, read too much, drink too much, talk too much, and work and earn and do way too little.

But Hollis does have an obsession: there's another world going on in his head, a world of excitement and danger and starships and romance, and it's telling him that it's time to stop dreaming and get serious.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 1997
ISBN: 978-1250092373
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Codex

About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hot-shot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients.

When asked to uncrate and organize a personal library of rare books, Edward's indignation turns to intrigue as he realizes that there may be a unique medieval codex hidden among the volumes, a treasure kept locked away for many years and for many reasons.

As friends draw Edward into a peculiar and addictive computer game, his obsession deepens as he discovers surprising parallels between the game's virtual reality and the mystery of the codex. An accomplished and entertaining thriller, Codex explores the mysterious power of books in the medieval and modern ages.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-9085193883
Publisher: Harvest Books

Novellas

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

Mark is 17-years-old and trapped in a time loop, and that’s just fine with him. It’s summertime and he’s spending this one infinitely repeating day reading his way through the town library.

Then he discovers someone else in the loop with him: the brilliant, haunted Margaret.

Together Mark and Margaret set out to find every wonderful, amazing, perfect thing that happens in that one day—a journey that will take them to the dark secret that waits at the very heart of their endless day.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Director: Ian Samuels
Cast: Kathryn Newton, Kyle Allen, Jermaine Harris, Anna Mikami, Josh Hamilton, Cleo Fraser, Al Madrigal, Jorja Fox, Teance Blackburn
Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2021
Ebook: B08T97NM62
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

The Magicians

The Magicians

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make 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. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

The Magicians (TV series)
Director: Multiple directors across the 5 seasons
Cast: Jason Ralph, Stella Maeve, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Hale Appleman, Arjun Gupta, Summer Bishil, Rick Worthy, Jade Tailor, Brittany Curran, Trevor Einhorn
Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2009
Ebook: B002AU7MJU
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Magician King

Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to discover that Fillory—a fictional utopia—was actually real. But even as a Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring.

Accompanied by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off—only to somehow wind up back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they’d hoped. As the pair struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, Quentin is forced to rely on Julia’s illicitly learned sorcery as they face a sinister threat in a world very far from the beloved fantasy novels of their youth.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-0452298019
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Magician's Land

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 desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever.

He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory—but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-0147516145
Publisher: Penguin Books
The Magicians: Alice's Story

Alice Quinn is manifestly brilliant, and she’s always known that magic is real. During her years at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, she rises to the top of her class, falls in love with Quentin Coldwater, and witnesses a horrifically magical creature invade their dimension.

It’s not soon after graduation when Alice, Quentin, and their friends set their sights on the idyllic setting of Fillory—a place thought to only live in the pages of their favorite children’s books—where magic flows like rivers...But in this magical realm nothing is what it seems and something darker lies behind the spellbinding façade. It is in the darkness where Alice will discover her true calling and her life, and those friends, forever changed.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-1684156337
Publisher: Archaia
The Magicians: The New Class

Long after Quentin and his friends have graduated from Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, Dean Fogg invites a historic new group of students to enroll– the first ever class of hedge magicians, rogue practitioners of unsanctioned magic. But the traditional magicians aren’t too thrilled to have the rule-breaking outcasts in their hallowed halls, and tempers flare as the student bodies clash to prove their superiority – not realizing a new danger has emerged to threaten them all.

The malevolence behind the threat at Brakebills will rock everyone to their cores – and even shock longtime fans of The Magicians!

New York Times bestselling series creator Lev Grossman returns with an all-new story in the world of The Magicians with award-winning writer Lilah Sturges (The Magicians: Alice’s Story) and rising star artist Pius Bak that features the first appearance of the next generation of heroes and villains.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-1684155651
Publisher: Archaia

The Silver Arrow

The Silver Arrow

Dear Uncle Herbert,

You've never met me, but I'm your niece Kate, and since it is my birthday tomorrow and you are super-rich could you please send me a present?

Kate and her younger brother Tom lead dull, uninteresting lives. And if their dull, uninteresting parents are anything to go by, they don't have much to look forward to. Why can't Kate have thrilling adventures and save the world the way people do in books?

Even her 11th birthday is shaping up to be mundane -- that is, until her mysterious and highly irresponsible Uncle Herbert, whom she's never even met before, surprises her with the most unexpected, exhilarating, inappropriate birthday present of all time: a colossal steam locomotive called the Silver Arrow.

Kate and Tom's parents want to send it right back where it came from. But Kate and Tom have other ideas -- and so does the Silver Arrow -- and soon they're off to distant lands along magical rail lines in the company of an assortment of exotic animals who, it turns out, can talk.

With only curiosity, excitement, their own resourcefulness and the thrill of the unknown to guide them, Kate and Tom are on the adventure of a lifetime...and who knows? They just might end up saving the world after all.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0316539548
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
The Golden Swift

A lot has changed for Kate in a year. She and Tom are now full-fledged conductors of the steam-powered, animal-saving Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. Life is good!

Or goodish, anyway. Her uncle Herbert has gone missing, and the worsening climate means that there are more and more animals that need help all the time. How many times does Kate have to save the world before it stays saved?

And her real life isn’t exactly perfect either. She flunked her audition for the junior high musical and got stuck in the chorus, while her archenemy, Jag, got a lead.

So, out of desperation, Kate breaks the rules and takes the Silver Arrow out on an unsanctioned mission, to find Uncle Herbert and bring back balance to the world. But she quickly discovers she’s not the only one on the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. There’s a mysterious train called the Golden Swift out there too, with an agenda of its own. Is it an ally? A rival? An enemy? A bit of all three?

The question will turn Kate’s world upside down, take her from the Scottish Highlands to the Australian outback to the bottom of the Bering Sea, and lead her straight on a collision course with the mysterious masters of the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway itself. Because when you're a human being fighting to save nature, are you the hero or are you the villain? There are no simple answers.

Author: Lev Grossman
First Release: 2022
ISBN: 978-0316283649
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers