. . and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence. In a dark age it takes courage to live, and more than mere courage to challenge those who hold dominion, Richard and Kahlan must take up that challenge or become the next victims. Beyond awaits a bewitching land where even the best of their hearts could betray them. Yet, Richard fears nothing so much as what secrets his sword might reveal about his own soul. Falling in love would destroy them—for reasons Richard can't imagine and Kahlan dare not say.In their darkest hour, hunted relentlessly, tormented by treachery and loss, Kahlan calls upon Richard to reach beyond his sword—to invoke within himself something more noble. Neither knows that the rules of battle have just changed . . . or that their time has run out.This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend.

    Magical creations only last for a single day (magical food is great for dieting), but that is quite long enough for casting a giant wet blanket (if you're feeling kind) over a would-be rampaging male - or a block of granite (if you're not). No uppity males in Mazonia!But then as now some people rise above what they've been taught. One such is Xylina; somehow she has always understood that being of the wrong gender, or even lacking magical power, is no reason for stripping a human being of dignity. How ironic, then, that the Queen has ordained that in order to avoid execution Xylina must use her magic to publicly conquer the most glorious male Mazonia has ever seen - and how doubly so that together he and Xylina will transform their world.

    Another wet summer, another year of storm surges and high tides. But this time the Thames Barrier is breached and central London is swamped. The waters recede, life goes on, the economy begins to recover, people watch the news reports of other floods around the world. And then the waters rise again. And again.Lily, Helen, Gary and Piers, hostages released from five years captivity at the hands of Christian Extremists in Spain, return to England and the first rumours of a flood of positively Biblical proportions…Sea levels have begun to rise, at catastrophic speed. Within two years London and New York will be under water. The Pope will give his last address from the Vatican before Rome is swallowed by the rising water. Mecca too will vanish beneath the waves.The world is drowning. A desperate race to find out what is happening begins. The popular theory is that we are paying the price for our profligacy and that climate change is about to redress Gaia’s balance. But there are dissenting views. And all the time the waters continue to rise and mankind begins the great retreat to higher ground. Millions will die, billions will become migrants. Wars will be fought over mountains.

    For years she has asked the gods for the strength she'll need to avenge this foul death, and it seems the gods have answered her. She's been granted an array of powers never before seen in one person, but she has also acquired a most terrifying burden, a demonmark. This mark can open the door to undreamed abilities, but it can also open her soul to the forbidden dark side of magic. Keleios must choose between the demonmark's tainted power and the lives of those she holds most dear. In an epic battle of good versus evil, of enchanted swords and shapeshifting dragons, of unquenchable hatred and unlikely love, Keleios must face her own demons—before she can acquire the most important power of all: the power to forgive.

    As nation after nation declares war, a chain of treaties are invoked, ultimately bringing almost all the Powers of Derlavai into a war of unprecedented destructiveness.For modern magic is deadlier than in years past. Trained flocks of dragons rain explosive fire down on defenseless cities. Massed infantry race from place to place along a network of ley-lines. Rival powers harness sea leviathans to help sabotage one another's ships. The lights are going out all across Derlavai, and will not come back on in this lifetime.Against this tapestry Harry Turtledove tells the story of an enormous cast of characters: soldiers and generals, washerwomen and scholars, peasants and diplomats. For all the world, highborn and low, is being plunged by world war...into the darkness.

    The Elves live far from humankind. There are no High Mages, and Wild Mages are seen only rarely. Bisochim, a powerful Wild Mage, is determined to reintroduce Darkness to the world, believing that it is out of Balance. Tiercel, a young Armethalian nobleman, is convinced that High Magic is not just philosophy. He attempts a spell—and draws the unwelcome attention of Bisochim. Tiercel survives Bisochim's attack and begins trying to turn himself into a High Mage. Next in line to be Harbormaster of Armethalieh, Harrier instead finds himself regularly saving Tyr's life and meeting magickal people and creatures. To Harrier's dismay, it seems that he must become a hero. In The Phoenix Unchained, Harrier and Tiercel begin a marvelous journey to uncover their destinies. Along the way, they meet a charming female centaur, several snooty Elves, and the most powerful dragon their world has ever known.

    Donaldson changed the face of fantasy fiction forever. In The Mirror of Her Dreams, the astonishing first novel in the two-volume Mordant’s Need series, Donaldson shows us a world of wondrous beauty and seductive illusion, where mirrors hold the deadliest of magics and nothing is what it seems. . . .The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life—until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.

    HARPY'S FLIGHT was Lindholm's first novel, and the first in the WINDSINGERS series, which introduced her popular gypsy characters, Ki and Vandien.

    In the "real world, " they were Alice, Caine, Eric, Meredith, and Hiroko - respectively, scientist, doctor, writer, antiquarian book expert, and art gallery owner. But when they became the Black Foxes they were transformed into: a pathfinder, a master healer, a warrior extraordinaire and leader of the Foxes, a bard whose music worked surprising magic, and a syldari Shadowmaster, able to bend the darkness itself to her needs. They had been chosen to participate in a unique experiment to help test AIVR, a supercomputer with artificial intelligence. Avery, as it was called, would create a virtual reality universe so convincing that the Black Foxes would forget the outside world as they undertook their journey. And so, under the watchful eyes of researchers, the contest between humans and machine began. Yet no one anticipated losing control of Avery. With the minds and souls of the Black Foxes trapped inside the machine's own private universe, their only hope of returning to the real world lay in carrying out a dangerous and deadly quest to defeat the DemonQueen and beat Avery at his own game....

    Chime is living an idyllic life with her family in the rural hamlet of Jacob's Vale. But her life is turned upside down when one of the King of Aronsdale's most trusted advisers, searching the kingdom for shape-mages, identifies her as a promising mage with powerful undeveloped ability. Chime reluctantly agrees to travel to Castle Suncroft, where she is to be trained in the art of magecraft -- and also groomed for her marriage to Prince Muller, the heir to the throne of Aronsdale! Muller is the nephew to the king, and the last thing he wants to do is get married and rule a kingdom. He's more concerned with fashion than affairs of state. When the King of Aronsdale dies and Muller continues to postpone his royal ascension, the leader of a neighboring kingdom -- along with an insane mage bent on destroying Aronsdale -- sees the transition as the perfect time to strike.Simply put, The Charmed Sphere is a novel of superlatives. If a reader were to choose only one new romantic fantasy to read, it should be Catherine Asaro's unforgettable gem. Paul Goat Allen

    "The scope, detail, meticulous planning and weaving and winding storyline . . . are just breathtaking."--R.A. Salvatore.

    There are even those who suspect that the last of the great Mages spent their final years scrupulously eradicating all traces of their craft from the pages of history—insuring that their art will never be practiced again. It is the dawn of a new era: an age of reason, science and exploration, and Tristram Flattery is one of its most promising young naturalists.But when Tristam is summoned to the royal court of Farrland to try to revitalize a failing species of plant which seems to have mysterious, almost magical, medicinal properties—a plant without which, he is told, the aging kind will surely die—he soon realizes that he has been drawn into the heart of a political struggle which spans generations, a conflict which threatens the very foundations of his civilization. And before long, Tristam is caught in the grip of a destiny which will lead him to the ends of the known world—on a voyage of discovery that has more to do with magic than with science…

    Lush and sensual, Starless introduces us to an epic world where exiled gods live among us, and a hero whose journey will resonate long after the last page is turned.Let your mind be like the eye of the hawk…Destined from birth to serve as protector of the princess Zariya, Khai is trained in the arts of killing and stealth by a warrior sect in the deep desert; yet there is one profound truth that has been withheld from him.In the court of the Sun-Blessed, Khai must learn to navigate deadly intrigue and his own conflicted identity…but in the far reaches of the western seas, the dark god Miasmus is rising, intent on nothing less than wholesale destruction.If Khai is to keep his soul’s twin Zariya alive, their only hope lies with an unlikely crew of prophecy-seekers on a journey that will take them farther beneath the starless skies than anyone can imagine.

    Now, after his death, his sons have taken up his work. But what they discover is beyond what they could have expected. For the Wood is a realm where myths gain flesh and blood, tapping primal fears and desires subdued through the millennia. A realm where love and beauty haunt your dreams -- and may drive you insane. Mythago Wood won the World Fantasy Award on its first publication in 1984, and secured Robert Holdstock's reputation as one of the major fantasy writers of our time. Now it returns to print in America for the first time in nearly a decade.

    Yet she and her kind are bereft of their origins, because on Earth, in a beautiful village named Cloudcroft, the Great Gates between worlds stand sealed.Her parents, Auberon and Jessica, are the warm heart of Cloudcroft and of Rosie’s loving family. But on the hill lives the mysterious, aloof Lawrence Wilder, Gatekeeper to the inner realms of Elfland. Tortured by private demons, he is beset by trouble on all sides: his wife has vanished and his sons Jon and Sam are bitter and damaged. Lawrence is duty bound to throw open the Gates every seven years for the Night of the Summer Stars, a ritual granting young Aetherials their heritage, their elders vital reconnection to their source. Lawrence, however, is haunted by fears of an ever-growing menace within the Spiral. When he stubbornly bars the Gates, he defies tradition and enrages the Aetherial community. What will become of them, deprived of the realm from which flows their essential life force? Is Lawrence protecting them—or betraying them?Growing up amid this turmoil, Rosie and her brothers, along with Sam and Jon Wilder, are heedless of the peril lurking beyond the Gates. They know only that their elders have denied them their birthright, harboring dark secrets in a conspiracy of silence.When Sam is imprisoned for an all-too-human crime, age-old wounds sunder the two families…yet Rosie is drawn into his web, even as she fears the passions awoken in her by the dangerous Wilder clan. Torn between duty and desire, between worlds, Rosie unwittingly precipitates a tragedy that compels her to journey into the Otherworld, where unknown terrors await. Accompanied by the one man most perilous to her life, she must learn hard lessons about life and love in order to understand her Aetherial nature…and her role in the terrifying conflict to come.