The Secret Commonwealth
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Return to the world of His Dark Materials in the second volume of Philip Pullman’s new bestselling masterwork The Book of Dust.
The windows between the many worlds have been sealed and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue’s youth are long behind her—or so she thought. Lyra is now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia’s College and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past.
The more Lyra is drawn into these mysteries, the less she is sure of. Even the events of her own past come into question when she learns of Malcolm Polstead’s role in bringing her to Jordan College.
Now Lyra and Malcolm will travel far beyond the confines of Oxford, across Europe and into the Levant, searching for a city haunted by daemons, and a desert said to hold the truth of Dust. The dangers they face will challenge everything they thought they knew about the world, and about themselves.
Praise for The Book of Dust
“It’s a stunning achievement, this universe Pullman has created and continues to build on.” —The New York Times
“Pullman’s writing is simple, unpretentious, beautiful, true. The conclusion to The Book of Dust can’t come soon enough.”—The Washington Post
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Level 6, 30 Points
Philip Pullman. (2019). The Secret Commonwealth: The Secret Commonwealth. Random House Children's Books.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Philip Pullman. 2019. The Secret Commonwealth: The Secret Commonwealth. Random House Children's Books.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth: The Secret Commonwealth. Random House Children's Books, 2019.
MLA Citation (style guide)Philip Pullman. The Secret Commonwealth: The Secret Commonwealth. Random House Children's Books, 2019.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 0 |
OverDrive Product Record
- readingOrder
- 2
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/172/AC8/F6/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/172/AC8/F6/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510683
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- type: ASIN
- value: B07NV48TJD
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510683
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510669
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Philip Pullman
- isOwnedByCollections
- False
- title
- The Secret Commonwealth
- seriesId
- 503273
- dateAdded
- 2019-10-07T20:47:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=569&titleID=4667052
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: NorthNet Library System (CA)
- id: 2323
- sortTitle
- Secret Commonwealth
- crossRefId
- 4667052
- series
- The Book of Dust
- subtitle
- The Secret Commonwealth
- id
- 172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071
- starRating
- 4
OverDrive MetaData
- interestLevel
- UG
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: TheSecretCommonwealt_9780553510683_4667052
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 7107024
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510683
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 10/3/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=172ac8f6-6eb4-4859-b407-f351c2343071&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheSecretCommonwealt_4667052
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- type: ASIN
- value: B07NV48TJD
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 10/3/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=172ac8f6-6eb4-4859-b407-f351c2343071&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheSecretCommonwealt_9780553510683_4667052
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510683
- type: PublisherCatalogNumber
- value: 246698
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 10/3/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=172ac8f6-6eb4-4859-b407-f351c2343071&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: teen books
- value: Young Adult
- value: Classics
- value: Adventure
- value: secret
- value: dystopia
- value: fantasy
- value: HBO
- value: books for teens
- value: books for young adults
- value: his dark materials
- value: young adult books
- value: classic books
- value: fantasy books
- value: ya books
- value: books for teen girls
- value: books for teens 12-16 girls
- value: good books
- value: books for teen boys
- value: books for teenage boys
- value: tween books
- value: award winning childrens books
- value: teen girl books
- value: teen boy books
- value: new york times best sellers
- value: teenage books
- value: 6th grade reading books
- value: Golden Compass
- value: mystery books for adults
- value: murder mystery books for teens
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Pullman, Philip
- bioText: PHILIP PULLMAN is one of the most acclaimed writers working today. He is best known for the His Dark Materials trilogy, which has been named one of the top 100 books of all time by Newsweek and one of the all-time greatest novels by Entertainment Weekly. Pullman was knighted for his services to literature in the 2019 New Year Honours.
The Book of Dust, Pullman’s eagerly anticipated return to the world of His Dark Materials, will also be a book in three parts. It began with La Belle Sauvage and continues with The Secret Commonwealth.
Philip Pullman is the author of many other beloved novels. For younger readers: I Was a Rat!, Count Karlstein, Two Crafty Criminals!, Spring-Heeled Jack, and The Scarecrow and His Servant. For older readers: the Sally Lockhart quartet (The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well, and The Tin Princess), The White Mercedes, and The Broken Bridge. He has written a magnificent collection, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, and his essays and lectures on writing and storytelling have been gathered in a volume called Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling.
Philip Pullman lives in Oxford, England. - name: Philip Pullman
- imprint
- Knopf Books for Young Readers
- publishDate
- 2019-10-03T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- The Secret Commonwealth
- fullDescription
- The #1 New York Times Bestseller!
Return to the world of His Dark Materials in the second volume of Philip Pullman’s new bestselling masterwork The Book of Dust.
The windows between the many worlds have been sealed and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue’s youth are long behind her—or so she thought. Lyra is now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia’s College and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past.
The more Lyra is drawn into these mysteries, the less she is sure of. Even the events of her own past come into question when she learns of Malcolm Polstead’s role in bringing her to Jordan College.
Now Lyra and Malcolm will travel far beyond the confines of Oxford, across Europe and into the Levant, searching for a city haunted by daemons, and a desert said to hold the truth of Dust. The dangers they face will challenge everything they thought they knew about the world, and about themselves.
Praise for The Book of Dust
“It’s a stunning achievement, this universe Pullman has created and continues to build on.” —The New York Times
“Pullman’s writing is simple, unpretentious, beautiful, true. The conclusion to The Book of Dust can’t come soon enough.”—The Washington Post - seriesId
- 1798287
- gradeLevels
- value: Grade 4
- value: Grade 5
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: New Statesman
- content: "The novel gallops forward, full of danger, delight and surprise. Pullman is a staggeringly gifted storyteller."
- premium: False
- source: Newsweek
- content: "The Secret Commonwealth reasserts Pullman's affection for the wondrous and those pieces of reality which can be seen only by those willing to see."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
October 1, 2019
A desert rose with mysterious properties sets off a rush. The events of The Book of Dust (2017) and the His Dark Materials series behind her, Lyra Silvertongue has grown into a rude post-teen so enthralled by the existential hyperrationalism of two popular writers that even her daemon Pantalaimon can't stand to talk to her. Believing that Lyra's imagination has been stolen, Pan braves mutual anguish to slip off to fetch it back. Meanwhile, hints of a rare Central Asian rose whose attar confers the power to see Dust arrive in Brytain, the theocratic Magisterium is poised to expand its reach under the sway of a sinister mastermind, and Malcolm Polstead, Oxford professor and secret agent, finds himself involved in ominous local events--all adding up to multiple characters embarking on parallel journeys across Europe and onward. Pullman places his cast of white main characters in a Eurocentric world marked by rising authoritarianism, general anxiety, desperate refugees, and anonymous terrorists violently destroying rose crops in the name of a vaguely religious Holy Purpose. He skillfully weaves in deeper themes of change and of love's complexities, ruminations on the nature of evil, evidence of magical truths beneath reality's veneer, swipes at organized religion, and the powerful--if often twisted--ties of family. This entry, while well stocked with familiar characters in a story founded on ideas, is also not lacking in grand events and narrow squeaks. Exhilarating. (Fantasy. 14-adult)COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
Starred review from October 7, 2019
Twenty years after the events of La Belle Sauvage, and eight years after those of the His Dark Materials trilogy, this second volume in Pullman's Book of Dust series blends spy thriller, otherworldly travelogue, and philosophical musing. Twenty-year-old Lyra Silvertongue's student life in Oxford is upended when her daemon, Pantalaimon, witnesses an incident that entangles them with a covert agency to which Malcolm Polstead belongs, impelling Malcolm to investigate a shift in the global power balance. Meanwhile, Lyra's fascination with a logic-obsessed, daemon-omitting novel causes Pan to decamp in search of her imagination. Tracked by a young alethiometer savant named Bonneville, Lyra furtively sets out for the Levant, searching for a rumored refuge for separated daemons. Through prodigious planning that is likely to set up the final volume, Pullman connects characters and moments from all the previous books. The sprawling, sometimes meandering narrative follows Lyra, Pan, and Malcolm on their journeys while exploring the power of transnational religious and corporate organizations, the plight of various marginalized groups, and the importance of a worldview that includes unprovable truths. Lyra, Pantalaimon, and Malcolm are familiar yet altered by age; it is a pleasure to get to know them again. Ages 14âup.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
October 25, 2019
Gr 9 Up-It's been 20 years since Malcolm Polstead braved a once-in-a-lifetime flood to bring the infant Lyra Silvertongue to Jordan College, events detailed in Pullman's first "Book of Dust" title, La Belle Sauvage. Now, Lyra is a student at Oxford and Malcolm a professor at a different Oxford college. Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, have been at odds over Lyra's interest in a rationalist philosopher who believes that daemons are a human delusion. After Pan witnesses a murder, he and Lyra find the dead man's rucksack, which is full of plant samples and information about his expedition to a desert where roses grow that allow people to see Dust, but where daemons cannot go. Pan leaves after he and Lyra have an intense argument, and when Lyra sets off to look for him, she's followed by agents of the Magisterium and a mysterious young scholar who has developed a new way of reading the alethiometer, as well as Malcolm, who hopes to help her. She travels to an address in Turkey listed in the dead man's notes and meets a sorcerer who commits an act of cruelty in front of her and tells her she'll find Pan if she goes to Syria. On her journey, she learns about an underworld where daemons are stolen and sold, and confronts an ongoing refugee crisis. VERDICT Older teens and adults who are already invested in the series will be excited to catch up with Lyra and Malcolm, but with primarily adult characters and a complicated plot, this will have limited appeal in most YA collections.-Stephanie Klose, Library Journal
Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
July 1, 2019
Don't start here. While bibliographically this second entry in the trilogy follows La Belle Sauvage, biographically it picks up when Lyra is twenty, with the events of the initial His Dark Materials trilogy ten years in her past. The novel is rich in incident but sprawling. Devotees will enjoy the often-surprising but neatly done connections to the previous volumes, however this book provides no resolutions to any of the conflicts and quests it proposes.(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
November 1, 2019
Don't start here. While bibliographically this second entry in Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy follows La Belle Sauvage (rev. 10/18), biographically it picks up when Lyra is twenty, with all of the events of the initial His Dark Materials trilogy now ten years in her past. Lyra's life at Oxford is complicated by a new Master of Jordan College, who wants her out, and by changes in her relationship with her daemon, Pantalaimon. "You're a fucking stranger to me, Pan" says Lyra, and while the rift feels manufactured (Lyra is reading an Ayn Rand-like bestseller that Pullman Pan deems "dangerous"), it sets up the structure of the novel as the two go their separate ways, she in pursuit of the supernatural roses grown in a forbidding Central Asian desert; he in pursuit of Lyra's "imagination." Pullman's devotees will enjoy the often-surprising but neatly done connections to the previous volumes, with the did-they-or-didn't-they end of The Amber Spyglass (rev. 11/00) answered here, and the young hero Malcolm (of La Belle Sauvage) taking a new, grownup interest in Lyra and her quest. The novel is rich in incident, but sprawling, requiring us at one point to follow six separate characters chasing the secret roses and/or one another. The "Secret Commonwealth" of the title hints at being something even more essential than Dust, but readers will have to wait for the next volume to (perhaps) find out; indeed, this book provides no resolutions to any of the conflicts and quests it proposes. Like I said, don't start here. Roger Sutton(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
- popularity
- 1574
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/172ac8f6-6eb4-4859-b407-f351c2343071/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- 172ac8f6-6eb4-4859-b407-f351c2343071
- starRating
- 4
- readingOrder
- 2
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/172/AC8/F6/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/172/AC8/F6/{172AC8F6-6EB4-4859-B407-F351C2343071}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fantasy
- value: Young Adult Fiction
- value: Young Adult Literature
- publishDateText
- 10/03/2019
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780553510669
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- The #1 New York Times Bestseller!
Return to the world of His Dark Materials in the second volume of Philip Pullman’s new bestselling masterwork The Book of Dust.
The windows between the many worlds have been sealed and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue’s youth are long behind her—or so she thought. Lyra is now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia’s College and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past.
The more Lyra is drawn into these mysteries, the less she is sure of. Even the events of her own past come into question when she learns of Malcolm Polstead’s role in bringing her to Jordan College.
Now Lyra and Malcolm will travel far beyond the confines of Oxford, across Europe and into the Levant, searching for a city haunted by... - sortTitle
- Secret Commonwealth The Secret Commonwealth
- lexileScore
- 830
- crossRefId
- 4667052
- series
- The Book of Dust
- subtitle
- The Secret Commonwealth
- publisher
- Random House Children's Books
- atos
- 6
- bisacCodes
- code: YAF001020
- description: Young Adult Fiction / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories
- code: YAF019030
- description: Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Epic
- code: YAF036000
- description: Young Adult Fiction / Literary
