His present is marred by the outbreak of the Great War, and it is further stained by the death of his friend, Timothy Bodgley, in circumstances that leave Edward in hospital, implicated as Bodgley's murderer. Strange chains of history and causality tighten on Edward's life: He is the unwilling key figure in an otherworldly prediction of salvation and/or disaster, bound to break the prophecy or fulfill it.

    This is the first Ace printing.Cover Artist: Robert AdragnaContents:1 • The Eyes Have It • [Lord Darcy] • (1964) • novelette by Randall Garrett 63 • A Case of Identity • [Lord Darcy] • (1964) • novella by Randall Garrett 158 • The Muddle of the Woad • [Lord Darcy] • (1965) • novella by Randall Garrett 243 • A Stretch of the Imagination • [Lord Darcy] • (1973) • short story by Randall Garrett These four stories were first collected in this volume in 1979.

    Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok.Raised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk.Now the fate of Saylok lies with Alba and Bayr, whose bond grows deeper with every whisper of coming chaos. Charged with battling the enemies of their people, both within and without, Bayr is fueled further by the love of a girl who has defied the scourge of Saylok.What Bayr and Alba don’t know is that they each threaten the king, a greedy man who built his throne on lies, murder, and betrayal. There is only one way to defend their land from the corruption that has overtaken it. By breaking the curse, they could defeat the king…but they could also destroy themselves.

    A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come....

    In the land of Vonahr, the Exalted have ruled by virtue of their legendary magical abilities for centuries, heedless of the misery of the lower classes. Now revolution is in the air. . . .For two hundred years the Exalted classes have used their dazzling magical abilities to rule Vonahr. Now, their powers grown slack from disuse and their attention turned to decadent pleasures, they ignore the misery of the lower classes until the red tide of revolution sweeps across the land. Thrust into the center of the conflict is the beautiful Eliste vo Derrivalle, spirited daughter of a provincial landowner, who must now scramble for bread in the teeming streets of the capital. With the key to her magical abilities an elusive secret, she must suddenly find a way to survive in a world gone mad ... with liberty.Illusion is a work of fantasy on the grandest scale - a seamless web of passion, danger, heroism, and romance that will hold you spellbound from the first page to the last.

    Stackpole is a recognized star of military fantasy. The Dark Glory War is a thrilling new tale set in a world threatened by an unstoppable foe....In the sacred season of the Moon Month, four young men don the masks that herald their coming-of-age celebration, a time of testing, ritual, festival, and romance.But for Tarrant Hawkins and his friends Leigh, Rounce, and Nay, their first test becomes a desperate struggle for survival. For they will encounter the vanguard of an invasion force poised to overrun their homeland of Oriosa, and all four will find their lives changed forever when they encounter a legendary weapon that brings its wielder invincibility. Yet the magic sword may prove more curse than blessing, signaling the arrival of a cataclysmic battle with ancient foes. And in the face of dire sorceries and terrible battles, these youths will come to manhood...or to death.

    But in return for her love, he must meet her master ... Lucifer!

    R. Martin’s magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R. R. Martin’s stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.A GAME OF THRONESLong ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.source: georgerrmartin.com

    But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

    The king has retreated to the capital, abandoning the far-flung provinces. The only hope of the people lies in their Chosen One, blessed by the gods as defender of the realm. But of late every Chosen One has died, targeted by the harshest of the enemy attacks.Only the most desperate of men now seek that post. Devlin Stonehand is a desperate man. Overwhelmed by grief at the death of his family, he has lost the will to live. But he has vowed to provide for his brother's widow and children, and the post of the Chosen One carries with it a substantial reward.For Devlin, a farmer and metalsmith, it is the answer to his prayers--prayers that include a yearning for the oblivion of death. After he has won the post, though, Devlin discovers that sometimes the hardest goal to achieve is that which had once seemed the simplest. For unlike the other Chosen Ones, he persists in surviving. Are the gods just tormenting him further, or does he have a greater destiny than he imagined? Can a man who courts death ever truly come to embrace life?

    When the seafaring Allemanii tribes came to their shores, the two races lived side by side for generations, staying apart but trading and learning from each other in peaceful harmony. But something went horribly awry and the shari'a people were suddenly and brutally slain by the settlers who had come to dominate the land. They feared the shari'a . . . and more important, the witches who led them and who held powers that the Allemanii could barely comprehend. The remnants of this gentle people were scattered, and any shari'a who held the knowledge of the old ways and powers were proscribed and hunted to death. That was long ago, and young Brierley thinks she is the last shari'a witch in the world. She knows what discovery it would mean, but she cannot deny her gifts as a healer; risking discovery, she goes out time and again to bring solace . . . despite the fact that those Brierley saves are the very people who killed most of her race.When she saves the life of a nobleman's wife-a nobleman sworn to obliterate any trace of witchery-Brierley stumbles into a web of deceit and power struggles more deadly than anything she has ever faced. But she refuses to walk away-and by staying the course, Brierley gains the possibility of finding a love to last the ages, as well as a way to reclaim her people's heritage.With Mother Ocean, Daughter Sea, Marcellas has crafted a beautiful first novel that explores what it means to be different, to value that difference, and what happens when one trusts in true love.

    This is the story of Lord Otori Shigeru — who has presided over the entire series as a sort of spiritual warrior-godfather — the man who saved Takeo and raised him as his own and heir to the Otori clan. This sweeping novel expands on what has been only hinted at before: Shigeru's training in the ways of the warrior and feudal lord, his relationship with the Tribe of mysteriously powerful assassins, the battles that tested his skills and talents, and his fateful meeting with Lady Maruyama.Heaven's Net Is Wide is an epic tale of warfare, loyalty, love, and heartbreak. This book leaves off where Across the Nightingale Floor begins, finally bringing the Otori series full circle. And while it both completes and introduces the Tales of the Otori, it also stands on its own as a satisfying, dramatic novel of feudal Japan.

    Alone at the edge of the world, hope is all they have left.Desperate to save them, Omat journeys across the icy wastes, fighting for survival with every step. When she meets a Viking warrior and his strange new gods, they set in motion a conflict that could shatter her world...or save it.

    Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

    Jemisin.” -- BooknestA brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.But surprises aren’t always good.Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.