From the author of the best-selling series “The Chronicles of Benjamin Jamison”. Magic is waning. The ancient dragons of Torinth that once darkened the sky with their numbers are all but extinct. Older than even the dragons, the elementals, spirits of earth, sky, water and fire, have slumbered for millennia, leaving the races of Torinth to fend for themselves. The Kingdom of Northern Wastes feels not only the loss of magic but a foreboding change in seasons—winter grows longer with each passing season. The queen has set her eye on the south and the bounty of a fertile land. In the Southlands, Morgan, the third son of a lumber merchant, expects nothing from his future but hard work felling trees and chopping firewood. His property borders land belonging to the elven Kingdom of the Black Mountains, where Alexis, the third princess to the elven throne, is ranger. Alexis joined the rangers with hopes of forgetting the royal court, her family and a betrothal in which she had no say. Fascinated by the woodcutter’s son, she traverses the border between their properties, knowing they could never meet. Now an elemental has awoken, and set her sights on these two figures. In a time of uneasy kingdoms and threats of a pending war, she reaches out to Alexis and Morgan and arranges a conversation that will change the future of all of Torinth.

    Paxson --Foreword / Andre Norton --To light such a candle / Eluki Bes Shahar --The grail of heart's desire / Judith Tarr --Lady of Avalon / Diana L. Paxson --With God to guard her / Kate Elliott --Appreciation / C.J. Cherryh --Sing to me of love and shadows / Deborah Wheeler --The wellspring / Katharine Kerr --Knives / Dave Smeds. A refuge of firedrakes / Susan Shwartz --Appreciation / Charles de Lint --The hag / Lawrence Schimel --Salve, Regina / Melanie Rawn --Tress of Avalon / Elisabeth Waters --Sparrow / Esther Friesner --The spell between worlds / Karen Haber --The stone mother's curse / Dave Wolverton. Appreciation / Paul Edwin Zimmer --Iontioren's tale / Paul Edwin Zimmer --Winter tales / Adrienne Martine-Barnes --Dark lady / Jane M. Lindskold --The lily maid of Astolat / Laura Resnick --Appreciation / Jennifer Roberson --Guinevere's truth / Jennifer Roberson.

    Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such as Lear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous of all British heroes, King Arthur, it is as much myth as it is history and its veracity was questioned by other medieval writers. But Geoffrey of Monmouth's powerful evocation of illustrious men and deeds captured the imagination of subsequent generations, and his influence can be traced through the works of Malory, Shakespeare, Dryden and Tennyson.

    But true love may be the most perilous quest of all… Sir Lancelot, First Knight of King Arthur’s realm and the Queen’s champion, cannot be defeated by any earthly man—as long as he keeps his oaths to Arthur and Guinevere. Though arrogant and supremely confident, he will be brought to his knees by a mere maiden: Elaine of Corbenic. Together, they will have a son, Galahad—the knight destined to find the Holy Grail. Lancelot du Lac is the greatest knight of a peerless age, blessed by the Lady of the Lake with extraordinary military prowess. His fighting ability has earned him a place at King Arthur's side, but the powers the Lady has given him come with a terrible price. Elaine of Corbenic is struggling to hold her impoverished family together. The keep is a wreck and the peasants, starving, are on the brink of rebellion. Elaine's father is obsessed with finding the Holy Grail, and her older brother, maimed by Lancelot in a joust, is a bitter drunkard. Without a dowry, she has little hope for the future. Incognito, Lancelot rides into Corbenic on his way to the king's tournament. He finds the practical Elaine irresistible. Thoroughly dismayed when she reveals her contempt for "Lancelot," he must face his own arrogance to win her hand. For only with Elaine at his side will Lancelot have the strength to free himself from the enchantments that bind him…

    When a group of Nationalists use an ancient artifact to bring a villain from Arthurian myth back from the dead to gain power, retired monster hunter Bridgette McGuire pulls her unsuspecting grandson Duncan, a museum curator, into a world of magic and mysticism to combat the deadly secrets of England’s past that threaten its very future.New York Times bestselling writer Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + The Divine, Star Wars) and Russ Manning Award-winning artist Dan Mora (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Klaus) explore the mysteries of the past, the complicated truths of our history and the power of family to save the day…especially if that family has secret bunkers of ancient weapons and decades of experience hunting the greatest monsters in Britain’s history!Collects Once & Future #1-6.

    His name is Roland, a knight and warrior who has sworn to free the legendary sorcerer. But, to save the wizard, Roland must first confront an old, powerful enemy of Merlin's on a quest for the Holy Grail.

    Exiled to Canada for seven years, he has to find a job to pay his bills. For reasons he refuses to reveal, Mordred decides “Software Engineer” has a nice ring to it. And though experience with “killing the Once and Future King, my father” and “that time in feudal Japan” makes for a poor résumé, he is hired by a small tech startup in Toronto.In the midst of dealing with a crippling caffeine addiction and learning C++, Mordred thinks he has finally found someone to anchor him to the world of the living: Alan, the company’s offsite lead developer. Except that Alan might not be a "living" entity at all—he may, in fact, be the world's first strong AI. Or a demon that mistook a Windows install for the highway to Hell. Or, just maybe, the ghost of Alan Turing, currently inhabiting a laptop.Mordred's attempts to figure out his love life are hampered by constant interference from the Inquisitors of the Securitates Arcanarum, corporate espionage, real espionage, a sysadmin bent on enslaving the world, and Marketing's demands that Mordred ship software to the Russian Federation. Then Alan gets himself kidnapped. To save him, Mordred must ally himself with the company’s CEO, who will stop at nothing to rescue her lead developer so he can get back to work. But the Prince doesn’t just want to rescue Alan, he wants a Happily Ever After—and he will travel beyond Death itself to get one.Too bad Alan is perfectly happy as a computer.

    Encyclopedia covering different versions of the Arthurian cycle, with brief entries for characters, authors, texts, places, and themes.

    Powys thought Porius his masterpiece, but because of the paper shortage after World War II and the novel's lengthiness, he could not find a publisher for it. Only after he cut one-third from it was it accepted. This new edition not only brings Porius back into print, but makes the original book at last available to readers. Set in the geographic confines of Powys's own homeland of Northern Wales, Porius takes place in the course of a mere eight October days in 499 A.D., when King Arthur - a key character in the novel, along with Myrddin Wyllt, or Merlin - was attempting to persuade the people of Britian to repel the barbaric Saxon invaders. Porius, the only child of Prince Einion of Edeyrnion, is the main character who is sent on a journey that is both historical melodrama and satirical allegory. A complex novel, Porius is a mixture of mystery and philosophy on a huge narrative scale, as if Nabokov or Pynchon tried to compress Dostoevsky into a Ulyssean mold. Writing in The New Yorker, George Steiner has said of the abridged Porius that it "combines [a] Shakespearean-epic sweep of historicity with a Jamesian finesse of psychological detail and acuity. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, which I believe to be the American masterpiece after Melville, is a smaller thing by comparison." This new, and first complete, edition of the novel substantiates both Steiner's judgement and Powys's claim for Porius as his masterpiece.

    Alan S. Fredrick summarizes missing episodes and includes a translation of 'The Tale of Tristan's Madness.'One of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul's French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king's Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king's barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul's work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people strug1150gling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend.

    But after the sudden death of her parents, she hides behind the safety of her camera and her art until a vivid recurring dream compels her to dig into her father's research about Avalon and Camelot. When she is hurled into a magical realm by forces she thought were only the stuff of fairy tales, she finds herself thrown into an adventure she could never have imagined. Nearly everything she thought she knew about Arthurian legend was wrong. The independent eighteen-year-old is shocked to find that the people of Avalon think that she is the Destined One, the only person who can summon King Arthur back to life from his hidden chamber. Most surprising of all is that it's up to her to lead the Knights of the Round Table on an epic quest-an adventure that will transport them across the seven magic realms to reclaim all that has been lost so they can defeat the evil Mordrid for good. But first, she must bring the ancient warriors into her world and reunite them with their lost brothers. Chaperoning the legendary knights-with-a-chivalry-complex as they navigate the modern world is a constant challenge, and she certainly never thought she'd be caught between her intense feelings for the noble Sir Galahad and her growing friendship with the King. To fulfill the prophecy, Aliana will have to discover the meaning of friendship, bravery, loyalty, true love, and forgiveness. But can she do it all in time to save the realms from Mordrid's impending Armageddon?

    Dunkirk has fallen, Europe is at the breaking point, Ezra Pound and Lord Haw-Haw are poisoning the radio waves, Mordred has fled to Nazi Germany, and King Arthur and his worshipful Knights are deep in the fighting. When the Holy Grail presents itself--which is, in this version, the atomic bomb, "a superweapon if you will, with which we can chastise and thwart the enemy"--they must decide whether to hew to their knightly ways or adopt a modern ruthlessness. Barthelme makes brilliant comic use of anachronism to show that war is center stage in the theater of human absurdity and cruelty. But Arthur, in deciding to decline the power of the Grail, announces his unwillingness to go along: "It's not the way we wage war. The essence of our calling is right behavior, and this false Grail is not a knightly weapon."

    In this vivid and innovative interpretation of the King Arthur legend, she is summoned through time to the alien world of Nwm. With her only companion, the boy Arduu, she is caught between the opposing cruelties of the two Magics, the Circle, and the Line, who have been fighting one another over the centuries and across many worlds. When Morgan and Arduu gain possession of an ancient sword of the Third Magic, Earth itself is drawn into the struggle. Times and worlds merge as Morgan is brought face to face with her own destiny. The Third Magic will appeal to young readers of fantasy and mythology. An exciting new cover rejuvenates the earlier edition.

    They give a crucial new impetus to the story of the Grail by establishing a provenance for the sacred vessel - and for the Round Table itself - in the Biblical past; and through the controlling figure of Merlin they link the story of Joseph of Arimathea with the mythical British history of Vortigern and Utherpendragon, the birth of Arthur, and the sword in the stone, and then with the knightly adventures of Perceval's Grail quest and the betrayal and death of Arthur, creating the very first Arthurian cycle. Ambitious, original and complete in its conception, this trilogy - translated here for the first time - is a finely paced, vigorous piece of storytelling that provides an outstanding example of the essentially oral nature of early prose. NIGEL BRYANT is head of drama at Marlborough College. He has also provided editions in English of the anonymous thirteenth-century romance Perlesvaus, published as The High Book of the Grail, and Chretien's Perceval: The Story of the Grail.

    It follows Parzival from his boyhood and career as a knight in the court of King Arthur to his ultimate achievement as King of the Temple of the Grail, which Wolfram describes as a life-giving Stone. As a knight serving the German nobility in the imperial Hohenstauffen period, the author was uniquely placed to describe the zest and colour of his hero's world, with dazzling depictions of courtly luxury, jousting and adventure. Yet this is not simply a tale of chivalry, but an epic quest for spiritual education, as Parzival must conquer his ignorance and pride and learn humility before he can finally win the Holy Grail.