J. R. R Tolkien

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

"The final work of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, completing Christopher Tolkien's life-long achievement as the editor and curator of his father's manuscripts"--

The Fellowship was scattered. Some were bracing hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Some were contending with the treachery of the wizard Sarumon. Only Frodo and Sam were left to take the accursed Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor the dark Kingdom where Sauron was supreme. Their guide was Gollum, deceitful and lust- filled, slave to the corruption of the Ring.

A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, The Silmarillion is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before The Hobbit. Tolkien considered The Silmarillion his most important work, and, though it was published last and posthumously, this great collection of tales and legends clearly sets the stage for all his other writing. The story of the creation of the world...

"It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954-5. What may be less known is that he continued to write about Middle-earth in the decades that followed, right up until the years before his death in 1973. For him, Middle-earth was part of an entire world to be explored, and the writings in The Nature of Middle-earth reveal the journeys that he took as he sought to better understand his unique creation....

-- The Hobbit, as Bilbo remembers his first journey while he prepares for his last.