Soul Cara Kelly’s life is going nowhere when she’s lured to a faery festival. There she sees darkness and magic, madness and lust, and she comes out the other side with new eyes and an addiction to the fae. When the faery who saved her life returns to her, Cara knows there’s something wrong. Two souls exist in one body, and both need her, but to help one, she’ll end the life of the other. At first, her mind is made up, but both souls know how to charm her. As the days pass, it becomes clear that the faeries need a leader, and Cara finds herself sucked into a world where morals don’t exist. The truth of her past is hidden in the magic, but all Cara needs to do is survive the king’s coronation, then the fae will let her go forever. But that’s not what she wants anymore, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a king and a half-blooded solitary fae. Cara’s losing her way, and her heart, to the fae, but there’s still her life, and her humanity, left to lose. Fade Cara Kelly should have left the faery realm now that it has a king to rule all, but nothing is that simple. The real king is trapped in the Fade, and Cara’s journey is just beginning. Guilt-ridden by the fact Brendan’s soul was sacrificed for hers, she’s determined not to desert him after his one pure act of goodness. Time is running out; even if she makes it past all of the dangers of the Darkside, a shade might await her in the Fade. Running from enemy and friends alike, she sets out on a path that will lead headfirst into danger. Even if Cara makes it to the Fade, even if a goddess watches over her, she doesn’t trust all of her companions, she still has to find a way home, and freeing Brendan could cause a war between the faeries she cares about. And all the while, Chaos grows unchecked. Queen Three kings. Two queens. One heir. Chaos will rule...

    As she considers these adventures (a rescue mission aided by ghostly hallucinations; a secluded town of strangely shaped inhabitants; a movie star with a monstrous secret), Celia uncovers startling new truths about her family's past."Beautifully un-categorizable but wholly delightful, Odd Adventures With Your Other Father is a heady mix of the surreal, the poignant, the scary, and the heartwarming. A gleeful mash-up of genres, highly recommended!" - Peter Atkins, author of Morningstar and Big Thunder, screenwriter of Hellraiser II and III, creator of Wishmaster"Strange, darkly comic, wonderful book of two fathers and one daughter and just how weird and bright the world can be in the shadows of life." - Douglas Clegg, New York Times bestselling author

    A sorcerer, sage, prophet, and teacher, Merlin’s mysterious life has inspired a vast array of classic works while giving rise to numerous conflicting legends. Here, award-winning author Jane Yolen, one of the most acclaimed fantasy writers of our time, retells Merlin’s tales as never before. Through a series of stories and poems ranging across centuries—from the days of Merlin’s childhood as a feral boy to the possible discovery of his bones in a much later era—Yolen reimagines both the glory and grimness of Camelot, recalling characters and events from Arthurian legend, while ingeniously inventing new myths and dark fables. Merlin’s Booke is a brilliant patchwork, made up of tales that explore the mysteries of King Arthur’s world and the terrible magic that pervaded it. This ebook features a personal history by Jane Yolen including rare images from the author’s personal collection, as well as a note from the author about the making of the book.

    Willingly, he lets himself become intoxicated by the surreal beauty of a fairy-woman who offers to take him to a far away, forbidden land where all his desires will be fulfilled. He welcomes the opportunity to be away from the gruesome war that has consumed his life for so long, but what price will the warrior pay to be in a land void of death, loss and pain? Does the pleasure of the company of the stunning stranger outweigh the price he must pay to remain in The Isles of the Blest?

    

    

    Now, the land suffers under the tyranny of King Imre, whose savage oppression of the human population weighs heavily on Camber’s heart—a heart that is about to be shattered by a tragic loss that will lead him to confront the usurpers whose dark magic haunts the realm.  Saint Camber: The yoke of tyranny has finally been lifted in Gwynedd, but Camber’s job remains unfinished. The dangerous remnants of a conquered enemy still mass at the borders, and the new ruler is desperately unhappy wearing the crown. With the stability of a fragile kingdom at stake, its greatest champion must make the ultimate sacrifice: Camber of Culdi must cease to exist.  Camber the Heretic: The king’s heir is a mere boy of twelve, and the malevolent regents who will rule until young Alroy comes of age are determined to eliminate all Deryni. Suddenly, the future of Gwynedd hangs in the balance, and Camber—once adored as a saint, but now reviled as a heretic—must find a way to protect his people before everything and everyone he loves is destroyed in the all-consuming flames of intolerance and hate.   Filled with mysticism and magic, these sagas reminds us that “Kurtz’s love of history lets her do things with her characters and their world that no non-historian could hope to do” (Chicago Sun-Times).

    The fragile peace imposed by the conquerors has been shattered, compelling Artoria Argantel -- Lady of the Lake and Druid priestess -- to call upon the Spirit of War and Justice to deliver a champion who will unite the broken land. It is from Argantel's ancient and royal blood that the hero will spring; his sword will be forged from star-steel by ancient spells, carried by soldier-priests from the steppes of Asia to the edges of the Empire. Only one man can wield this holy steel, aided by the wizard Merlin, whose heritage is a magic wilder still. Only one man can free the sword from its prison of stone.Artor, a fosterling of unknown parentage. The promised High King.

    To add insult to injury, his mysterious rescuer took it upon himself to affix Tyvian with an iron ring that prevents the wearer from any evildoing.Revenge just got complicated.On his quest to get even, Tyvian navigates dark international conspiracies, dodges midnight assassins, and uncovers the plans of the ruthless warlord Banric Sahand—all while running from a Mage-Defender determined to lock him up. Tyvian will need to use every dirty trick in the book to avoid a painful and ignominious end, even as he discovers that sometimes even the world's most devious man needs a shoulder to lean on.

    When he dreams one night that he will drown, he knows upon waking it is only a matter of time before his dream becomes reality. Plucked from the timeline of history at the moment of his death, Gabriel becomes an apprentice time mage and part of an elite team of wizards who travel throughout history to fight the War of Time and Magic. Victorian London, the Aztec temples of 1487, the Greek island of Samos in 320 BCE, Scotland in the Middle Ages, and the battle fields of Alexander the Great are only some of the adventures in time that await Gabriel as he learns to become a time mage and joins the battle to protect the timeline of history in The Wizard of Time.

    She knows the Crusades, the Black Death, and the other horrors of the Middle Ages all too well, but it is another kind of atrocity that has begun to haunt her dreams. She sees forces of evil assaulting a beleaguered kingdom, whose kind people are on the brink of annihilation, and awakes each morning in a cold sweat. In The Time of the Dark, Gil dismisses the dreams until a wizard appears in her apartment. He has crossed into her dimension, passing through the fraying fabric of the universe, to ask her help. For mankind to survive he must protect an infant prince, whom he plans to hide in Gil's world. She is about to get much closer to evil than she ever imagined. In The Walls of Air and The Armies of Daylight, Gil and Rudy know the world is no longer safe and there is nowhere to hide from the Dark. Since the Dark Ones returned, the world has been laid to waste. The land’s wizards have been slaughtered, its cities destroyed, and its people scattered in terror. Few have witnessed more of the destruction than Gil and Rudy, and both of them will need all their strength to survive this final challenge. Ingold, the master wizard, has devised a spell to hide the user from the deathly stare of the Dark, and he intends to use it to strike at their very heart. Finally, Gil, Rudy, and the rest of mankind’s survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.

    And writers love to attend and document these occasions. The party is a useful literary device, not only for social commentary and satire but also as an occasion where characters can meet, fall in and out of love, or even get murdered.A Curious Invitation is a humorous and informative guide to literature's most memorable parties. Some of these parties are depictions of real events, like the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of battle with Napoleon in Thackeray's Vanity Fair; others draw on the authors' experience of the society they lived in, such as Lady Metroland's party in Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies; while others come straight from the writer's bizarre imagination, like Douglas Adams' flying party above an unknown planet from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Witty, entertaining, and full of fabulous detail, A Curious Invitation offers readers the chance to crash some of the great parties in literary history.

    This title presents a tale from the bestselling author of the Flashman Papers.

    Extreme danger. One fearless woman.Passerina Fowler just wants to be a professional fighter. She has struggled for years to make a name for herself. But then her life abruptly changes when she's discovered by a recruiter from SafeTrek Bridging, a company that transports clients to alternate versions of Earth.With nothing to lose, Passerina accepts a job as a bridger, an elite fighter who protects clients on excursions to alternate worlds. However, on her first day she witnesses a horrifying event and realizes bridging can be downright deadly.In spite of the risks, she is determined to complete her training program. But she soon realizes the training is more focused on her fears than her strength and endurance. And for good reason—there is much to be feared when bridging to alternate worlds naked and unarmed. Passerina must steadily transform herself into a bridger, with a new name: Infinity.Infinity grows impatient for the excitement and danger of her first bridging excursion. But when it finally comes, she finds herself in a world of vicious predators, and the danger becomes all too real.

    But those days are gone as the galaxy becomes the stomping ground for humans encountering strange new machinery and green-faced Martians. Depicted with stark realism and meticulous detail, this novel tells of the dangers, despair and unbelievable pleasure that awaits the men and women who are to populate the first ever station in space.