Search Results for: Tanith Lee

In this rich and varied collection of fantasy, science fiction and horror stories, Tanith Lee brings her power to bear on the nature of relationships between women and men. The witch, the femme fatale, the vengeful goddess, the Amazon – past, present and future – spring to live in these tales of mystery and imagination.

At last, Claidi and her beloved Argul are free to get married. But before they can start their life together, Claidi must face her past. They return to her birthplace, the House, to rescue the other slaves – and find that there has been a revolution, sparked by Claidi’s escape. Then the two are urgently summoned by Ironel Novendot of the Wolf Tower, who tells them that Ustareth is alive. Ustareth, the mother of Argul and Venn, the science-sorceress, who has perhaps manipulated each of them for their entire lives. Now she wants them all to visit her – but to what end?

Orphan-slave Claidi has fought for freedom and won. Now she looks forward to a life of happiness with the wandering Hulta people.
But once again for Claidi, nothing and no-one is as it seems. Secrets menace her; a bewildering land of giant flowers and savage animals; the awesome Rise, a great cliff topped by a mansion ruled by a strange, arrogant, enigmatic Prince. At dusk each night, the rising of the flaming Wolf Star.

Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord’s palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion-for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother’s hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father’s court, she grows into womanhood alone . . . until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her.

The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you’ve never heard it told before.

Once upon a time there was a mirror, and a girl as white as snow. . .

Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother’s lover have had rampant sex in Hesta’s bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside.

It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea.

For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out?

It’s dark.

VOLKHAVAAR is a novel of witchcraft and wonders on a world far removed from those we know. Here the gods contend for power – the Dark forces against the Light – and here an entire city and its land is plunged into the shadow of an eil beyond anything conceivable.

It is the story of Shaina the slave girl and of Volk the outcast who enslaved himself to cosmic forces to gain total power – and of how they were finally to meet and flash – with an entire world as their prize.

Vivia, a paragon of youth and beauty, daughter of Lord Vaddix, is alienated from his brutal campaign of violence and fear. Her only solace lies in the secret cave in the bowels of the castle, known only to her and the arcane god whose shrine she believes it is.

When plague enters the castle, bringing an orgy of death and destruction, Vivia seeks shelter in this seductive place. Drawn to her innocence and beauty, a presence – Zulgaris – is resurrected who claims her as his own. Wakened to the wonder of the undead, Vivia is granted the secret of eternal life, but she has been betrayed. Her immortality stretches before her like a damnation.

Handsome Zulgaris, dark prince, war-leader and alchemist. Is Vivia to be his lover, or his pet? Or, far worse, is she but one more thing to be used in this relentless quest for sorcerous power.

I saw her, hanging in the sky like a flake of the moon. A woman, her face masked by a black shireen, her body by a black shift, but her white arms spread, and her white, white, bone-white hair blowing all around her like a flame composed of smoke. Recognition was immediate. It was my mother. I shouted at her. It was crystal clear to me, what he had meant for me, my father, Vazkor, what she had robbed me of. And I drew from my belt my hunting knife and threw it at her heart.

Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t even look at them. The life of Roy Phipps can be summed up in a paragraph: He’s fifty, leads an uneventful, well-organised existence in the house inherited from his parents, earns a modest income writing formulaic detective novels, and remembers, sometimes, his encounters with women. Roy’s only aberration is the other novel he has been secretively also writing for years, the sprawling and florid story of the mad poet Vilmos, a study of murder, angst and alchemic magic. Then one evening Roy meets Vilmos, face to face. Of course, handsome Vilmos’s double, Joseph Traskul, is only a coincidental look-alike. But in those fatal minutes a terrible bond is formed. For Traskul is, at the very least, insane – charismatic, predatory, lawless – a sort of human demon – whose almost supernatural powers, once provoked, will prove unstoppable. As the fiery shadows close in on him, Roy soon understands that he is now fighting for his own sanity. And probably for his life.

She distrusted him at first, not least because she knew his words were lies. “Call me Grey,” he said, but that was not his name. Fear gripped her like a hand.

No one but the priestess could look upon the relics: the Ring, the Jewel and the Bone. It was for the bone that this grey stranger had come. He was like a thief, but she realized with a sinking heart that he was armed with as much magic as herself, and maybe more.

HE WHITE WITCH –

She is Aztira, one of the magical Amanackire race, a pure white albino with powers both mysterious and terrifying. She can grant life and defy death, enchant men – or destroy them!

AND THE WARRIOR –

He is Rehger. Sold into slavery at the age of four, he will become one of the finest warriors and charioteers in the land. Yet all his prowess with arms will not save him from the spell of the White Witch, a dangerous bewitchment that will lead him to challenge the mightiest of mortals and immortals … and to embark on a fearsome quest in search of the legendary city that is home to the Amanackire.

THE STORM LORD is a big novel of an unknown planet and of the conflict of empires and peoples on that world. It is a story of a priestess raped and slain, of a baby born of a king and hidden among strangers, and of how that child, grown to manhood, sought his true heritage.

It is a novel of alien gods and lost goddesses, of warriors and wanderers, and of vengeance long delayed.

It is an epic in every sense of the word.

For sixteen-year-old Jane, life is a mystery she despairs of ever mastering. She and her friends are the idle, pampered children of the privileged class, living in luxury on an Earth remade by natural disaster. Until Jane’s life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a robot minstrel with auburn hair and silver skin, whose songs ignite in her a desperate and inexplicable passion.

Jane is certain that Silver is more than just a machine built to please. And she will give up everything to prove it. So she escapes into the city’s violent, decaying slums to embrace a love bordering on madness. Or is it something more? Has Jane glimpsed in Silver something no one else has dared to see – not even the robot or his creators? A love so perfect it must be destroyed, for no human could ever compete?

THE GORGON, a brilliant shocker that leads off this scintillating collection of Tanith Lee’s tales, was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for best short story of the year in 1983. It is appropriate that it gives its title to these tales ranging from horror and the supernatural to science fiction, from the writer who has been justly termed “Princess Royal of Heroic Fantasy.”

Here you will find unforgettable encounters of men and beasts – of dragons and unicorns, cats and seals, virgins and vampires. This is truly a feast of treasures for everyone whose taste runs to a gourmet imagination.

Although she leads an overprotected life with the two old hags, Lilune knows she possesses a special gift. When she ‘calls’ the musician, Lir, to her prison-like castle, she knows she must avail herself of the opportunity to escape and explore the world. But travelling south of the castle, Lilune and Lir realize that they aren’t alone – for an ancient, infectious evil accompanies them, which instills terror in everyone they meet. Lir dislikes arrogant Lilune, but finds himself intrigued by her and the source of the evil. Is it within Lilune, or does it come from a deeper source? When the pair become separated, he carries on searching for her. Finally, Lilune returns to her castle in despair, believing that she must be imprisoned to protect the world from the evil within her. But Lir follows her, and discovers that the root of the evil lies deep beneath the castle…