Oh, what a tangled web . . . Everything should have been quiet and pleasant for Ben Holiday, the former Chicago lawyer who became sovereign of the Magic Kingdom of Landover. But it wasn’t. Horris Kew, conjurer, confidence-man, and trickster, had returned to Landover from Ben’s own world. Alas, Horris had not returned of his own volition—he had been sent by the Gorse, a sorcerer of great evil, whom Horris had unwittingly freed from the magic Tangle Box, where it had long ago been imprisoned by the fairy folk. Now it had returned to enslave those who had once dared condemn it. But first, it would rid Landover of all who could stand in its way. . . . Soon Ben found himself imprisoned within the gloom of the Tangle Box, lost in its mists and its labyrinthine ways. The only one who could free Ben from the Tangle Box was the lady Willow. But she had disappeared, was gone from Landover on a mysterious mission of her own. . . .

***50 MILLION TERRY BROOKS COPIES SOLD AROUND THE WORLD*** 'Terry's place is at the head of the fantasy world' Philip Pullman Horris Kew, conjuror and confidence-trickster, has returned to the Magic Kingdom of Landover, and a chorus of disapproval immediately assaults Ben Holiday's ears. Both Questor Thews, the Court Wizard, and Abernathy, the Court Scribe (currently, magically transformed into a dog) urge Ben to lock him up or exile him. Fair as ever, Ben decides to consider the problem rather than act immediately. Alas, this leads to disaster, for Horris's return is not what it seems, and Ben soon finds himself in deadly peril. Only his lady, Willow, holds the means to save him. But Willow has disappeared on a mysterious mission of her own . . . Praise for Terry Brooks: 'A master of the craft . . . required reading' Brent Weeks 'I can't even begin to count how many of Terry Brooks's books I've read (and re-read) over the years' Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind 'I would not be writing epic fantasy today if not for Shannara' Peter V. Brett, author of The Painted Man 'If you haven't read Terry Brooks, you haven't read fantasy' Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon

This invaluable book is an introduction to knot and link invariants as generalized amplitudes for a quasi-physical process. The demands of knot theory, coupled with a quantum-statistical framework, create a context that naturally and powerfully includes an extraordinary range of interrelated topics in topology and mathematical physics. The author takes a primarily combinatorial stance toward knot theory and its relations with these subjects. This stance has the advantage of providing direct access to the algebra and to the combinatorial topology, as well as physical ideas. The book is divided into two parts: Part I is a systematic course on knots and physics starting from the ground up, and Part II is a set of lectures on various topics related to Part I. Part II includes topics such as frictional properties of knots, relations with combinatorics, and knots in dynamical systems. In this new edition, an article on Virtual Knot Theory and Khovanov Homology has beed added. Contents:Physical KnotsStates and the Bracket PolynomialThe Jones Polynomial and Its GeneralizationsBraids and the Jones PolynomialFormal Feynman Diagrams, Bracket as a Vacuum-Vacuum Expectation and the Quantum Group SL(2)qYang–Baxter Models for Specializations of the Homfly PolynomialKnot-Crystals — Classical Knot Theory in a Modern GuiseThe Kauffman PolynomialThree Manifold Invariants from the Jones PolynomialIntegral Heuristics and Witten's InvariantsThe Chromatic PolynomialThe Potts Model and the Dichromatic PolynomialThe Penrose Theory of Spin NetworksKnots and Strings — Knotted StringsDNA and Quantum Field TheoryKnots in Dynamical Systems — The Lorenz Attractorand selected papers Readership: Physicists and mathematicians. Keywords:Knots;Kauffman;Jones PolynomialReviews: "This book is an essential volume for the student of low-dimensional topology from which a serious student can learn most aspects of modern knot theory. Its informal tone encourages investigation on the part of the reader. The author leaves the reader items to puzzle out." Mathematical Reviews Reviews of the Third Edition: “It is an attractive book for physicists with profuse and often entertaining illustrations … proofs … seldom heavy and nearly always well explained with pictures … succeeds in infusing his own excitement and enthusiasm for these discoveries and their potential implications.” Physics Today “The exposition is clear and well illustrated with many examples. The book can be recommended to everyone interested in the connections between physics and topology of knots.” Mathematics Abstracts “… here is a gold mine where, with care and patience, one should get acquainted with a beautiful subject under the guidance of a most original and imaginative mind.” Mathematical Reviews

This invaluable book is an introduction to knot and link invariants as generalised amplitudes for a quasi-physical process. The demands of knot theory, coupled with a quantum-statistical framework, create a context that naturally and powerfully includes a extraordinary range of interrelated topics in topology and mathematical physics. The author takes a primarily combinatorial stance toward knot theory and its relations with these subjects. This stance has the advantage of providing direct access to the algebra and to the combinatorial topology, as well as physical ideas. The book is divided into two parts: Part I is a systematic course on knots and physics starting from the ground up, and Part II is a set of lectures on various topics related to Part I. Part II includes topics such as frictional properties of knots, relations with combinatorics, and knots in dynamical systems. In this third edition, a paper by the author entitled "Functional Integration and Vassiliev invariants" has been added. This paper shows how the Kontsevich integral approach to the Vassiliev invariants is directly related to the perturbative expansion of Witten's functional integral. While the book supplies the background, this paper can be read independently as an introduction to quantum field theory and knot invariants and their relation to quantum gravity. As in the second edition, there is a selection of papers by the author at the end of the book. Numerous clarifying remarks have been added to the text.

In this thesis, the author develops numerical techniques for tracking and characterising the convoluted nodal lines in three-dimensional space, analysing their geometry on the small scale, as well as their global fractality and topological complexity---including knotting---on the large scale. The work is highly visual, and illustrated with many beautiful diagrams revealing this unanticipated aspect of the physics of waves. Linear superpositions of waves create interference patterns, which means in some places they strengthen one another, while in others they completely cancel each other out. This latter phenomenon occurs on 'vortex lines' in three dimensions. In general wave superpositions modelling e.g. chaotic cavity modes, these vortex lines form dense tangles that have never been visualised on the large scale before, and cannot be analysed mathematically by any known techniques.

The Tangle Box tells the story of a brother and a sister who grew up in a dysfunctional family on the east cost of Ireland.