Other editions of book The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, Book 1

Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the Scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon familiar, Pantalaimon, always by her side. When her uncle, Lord Asriel, returns from the North with tales of mystery and danger, it seems to have little to do with her -- even the rumor of the severed child. But his visit sets off a chain of events that draws Lyra into the heart of a terrible struggle -- a struggle that involves scientists performing hideous experiments on children, alliances with gyptians and witch clans, battles with trained mercenaries, and armored bears. And through it all, there dawns in Lyra a sense that her success or failure may mean even more than simply life or death.The first book in a planned trilogy, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass is stunningly original, beautifully crafted, and thrillingly told. It is a masterwork of fantasy and storytelling that heralds the arrival of a classic.

Read by the author and a full cast 10 hours, 49 minutes 9 CDs When Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon decide to spy on a presentation her uncle, the commanding Lord Asriel, is making to the elders of Jordan College they have no idea that they will become witnesses to an attempted murder—and even less that they are taking the first steps in a journey that will lead them into danger and adventure unlike anything Lyra's unfettered imagination has conjured up. Though she has been reised at the college in an atmosphere of benign neglect that has allowed her to become a half-wild child of the streets, Lyra soon finds herself apprenticed to the elegant Mrs. Coulter—and in possession of a strange device called the alethiometer, a "golden compass" that reads not true worth, but truth itself. But truth is a precious commodity, and before long Lyra and Pan are running for their lives, the object of an obsessive hunt by mysterious forces who have been stealing children for dark purposes that no one understands. Lyra will need all her street-learned wiles if she and Pan are to survive. An international sensation from the moment it was published, The Golden Compass comes to spectacular new life in this unabridged recording, narrated by Philip Pullman himself, with the support of some of the finest actors of the London stage.

Lyra and her daemon are eavesdropping when they uncover a plot to murder Lord Asriel. He has returned from the far North where he tells of strange sights-a beautiful city hovering in the sky above the pole, a shimmering Dust that settles on and delineates all but human children. Lyra is scarcely able to save his life before Lord Asriel is off again, on a quest to answer the riddle of the world. Meanwhile, children are disappearing, and when Lyra's dearest friend is taken by the Gobblers, she determines to save him - a decision which leads her on a great journey, a journey that will lead to the discovery of her mother, a disastrous betrayal and the beginning of the unravelling of the mystery of Dust.