Frodo is led to Orthanc, the citadel of Saruman, and the fortress of Minas Morgul that guards the secret entrance to Mordor. All the while, the Great Darkness draws in.

As the armies of the Dark Lord gather, Aragorn joins with the Riders of Rohan, Merry and Pippin escape into the Fangorn Forest and meet the Ents, Gandalf returns, and Sam and Frodo are separated after Frodo is captured by the Orcs.

The hobbit Bilbo Baggins bids farewell to his friends and to the world of Middle-earth as he sets forth on his last journey.

The Book of Lost Tales stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor. Embedded in English legend and English association, they were set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the ocean by a mariner named Eriol (or AElfwine) to Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; from them he learned their true history, the Lost Tales of Elfinesse. In the Tales are found the earliest accounts and original...

The fourth volume in The History of Middle-earth series, sure to find an eager audience among Tolkien scholars and devoted readers.

The Lays of Beleriand are epic stories in verse form of the Elder days of Middle-earth. Contained herein is The Lay of the Children of Hurin, which tell the tale of Turin Son of Hurin and Glorund the Dragon. The Lay of Leithian tells of Thingol, of the meeting of Beren and Luthien, and of the battle between Fiingolfin and Morgoth. Together these Lays form an important backdrop to The Silmarillion, and illuminate some of the oldest tales of Middle-earth....

"The Silmarillion" tells of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien's World, when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle Earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. It is to this ancient drama that the characters in The Lord of the Rings so often look back.

Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal elf. Her father, a great elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, [Christopher Tolkien] has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts...

"From the 1910s to the 1970s, author and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien worked at creating plausibly realistic languages to be used by the creatures and characters in his novels. Like his other languages, Sindarin was a new invention, not based on any existing or artificial language. By the time of his death, he had established fairly complete descriptions of two languages, the "elvish" tongues Quenya and Sindarin. He was able to compose poetic and prose...