When I was six, my father, a tall, bearded naval officer, read me Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I thought it might be autobiography. Ever since, I've been fascinated by stories where fantasy and reality meet and blend. I studied English literature, taught Dead English Poets to undergraduates, became an editor/writer for hire. Along the way, I canoed, hiked the Rockies, and learned to sail a traditional Nova Scotian schooner. I have two sons, to whom I read stories night after night when they were much younger than they are now. Since retiring, I write fantasy adventure novels set aboard real sailing ships and stories about dragons who talk to exceptional people.
The second of LeGuin’s Earthsea books is a story made of fantasy, adventure, horror, mystery, and myth.
Tenar, the high priestess must choose between her lifelong training and her unexpected compassion for a thief named Ged, who she must execute in the Tombs of Atuan. Tenar leads Ged through darkness and terror to a place where she decides who she will become.
LeGuin’s prose is direct, evocative, and compelling. Read out loud, the story is spellbinding. It stays with me even though it’s years since my first reading. Each time I return to the fantastic yet entirely believable world she created, the characters I meet reveal some fresh insight into what it is to be human.
The second book of Earthsea in a beautiful hardback edition. Complete the collection with A Wizard of Earthsea, The Furthest Shore and Tehanu
With illustrations from Charles Vess
'[This] trilogy made me look at the world in a new way, imbued everything with a magic that was so much deeper than the magic I'd encountered before then. This was a magic of words, a magic of true speaking' Neil Gaiman
'Drink this magic up. Drown in it. Dream it' David Mitchell
In this second novel in the Earthsea series, Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless…
I love Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar for its magic realism. For me, the story reads as real, even when it travels into the fantastic. Jess Wells’ writing is like music: it goes on singing in the back of my mind long after I’ve closed the book.
Jaguar Paloma is a larger than life woman in a setting that is more intense than everyday reality. Strong and vulnerable, audacious and cunning, Jaguar’s compassion inspires a splendid collection of men and women.
In 1865 in the shanty town of Tartatenango, the Caketown Bar is owned by the extraordinary Jaguar Paloma, matriarch of a village that is home to raucous miscreants, cast-off mothers, muleteers, and forgers. Amid drunken monks, a roaring trade in faked marriages just for fun, and the Romani, all balance on the knife-edge between legality and the illicit. Paloma’s life is honed by this community, as their lives are affected by her mystery and magic.
Co-founder of this extraordinary gathering is Orietta Becerra. Breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious, her distillery builds the success of Caketown. But when she crosses the tracks…
I was captivated by these stories from the moment I read the title of the first chapter: “In which Cimorine refuses to be proper and has a conversation with a frog.”
Cimorene is a young woman with no intention of being rescued by a knight in armour. She prefers the company of the dragon for whom she is princess in residence.
These books re-imagine traditional princess stories through a woman’s eyes. Cimorene and her adventures are light-hearted, but as children (and parents who read to them) encounter wicked wizards, wonderful witches, magical carpets, swords, and castles they will celebrate this princess as the tough-minded lady Patricia Wrede has made her.
Collected together for the first time in a digital format are Patricia C. Wrede's hilarious adventure stories about Cimorene, the princess who refuses to be proper. Every one of Cimorene's adventures is included—Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons—in a single ebook.
I have revisited Darkover Landfalloften, but it never loses its hold on my imagination. It’s the Darkover novels’ origin story, telling what happens when an interstellar colonizing starship goes off course and crash-lands on an uncharted planet. In essence, this is Science Fiction, except that the earth-like planet has fantastic creatures, some of them with paranormal powers.
The castaways include a few hard-nosed scientific professionals who expect to lead many industrious generalists who plan to colonize a new world. All must recognize that the technology that brought them to Darkover will not sustain them unless they adapt, learn, and unlearn. It’s a story to make us wonder what we really need from our planet and each other.
Darkover, planet of wonder, world of mystery, has been a favorite of science fiction fans for many years. For it is a truly alien sphere - a world of strange intelligences, of brooding skies beneath a ruddy sun, and of powers unknown to Earth. In this novel, Marion Zimmer Bradley tells of the original coming of the Earthmen, of the days when Darkover knew not humanity.
This is the full-bodied novel of what happened when a colonial starship crash-landed on that uncharted planet to encounter for the first time in human existence the impact of the Ghost Wind, the psychic…
The Hobbit—the book, not the film—is the perfect story for a father to read to his children at bedtime. It begins outside Bilbo’s underground home in front of its round, green door on which Gandalf scrapes a secret mark to be read by thirteen dwarves. Like Bilbo’s road to adventure, the story goes on and on, pausing regularly for father to tuck us in to sleep, perhaps to dream. Thanks to the promise of Bilbo’s subtitle “There and Back Again,” we close our eyes without fear of nightmares about trolls, dwarves, elves, goblins, spiders, and dragons.Night after night, reading after reading, Bilbo Baggins returns to surprise us with his courage, and ingenuity born of common sense.
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…
My book is about dragons of great power and authority. While Petra and Daniel are on holiday, Daniel finds a curious stone that hatches into a tiny dragon who tells them stories about a young princess, a retired wizard, a blind man in love, a boy who can’t laugh, a thief-of-hearts musician, a fearsome warrior, a girl who asked for too much, a lonely poet, a dying witch, and a queen who faced a pirate. Each story involves a different dragon, some caring, some heartless, all bringing change to those who summon them.
It’s beautifully illustrated by Shirley, and there’s an audio version, free on Scribl.com, read by me.
About myself: As a novelist I’m crazy for detail. I believe it’s the odd and unexpected aspects of life that bring both characters and story worlds to life. This means that I try to be an observer at all times, keeping alert and using all five – and maybe six – senses. My perfect writing morning begins with a dog walk in the woods or on a beach, say, while keeping my senses sharp to the world around me and listening out for the first whisper of what the day’s writing will bring.
This book is a literary historical novel. It is set in Britain immediately after World War II, when people – gay, straight, young, and old - are struggling to get back on track with their lives, including their love lives. Because of the turmoil of the times, the number of losses, and the dangerous and peculiar circumstances people find themselves in, sexual mores have become shaken and stirred.
But what happened after the war, in the time of healing and settling down? This novel examines the emotional, romantic, and sexual lives of three characters searching for a way to proceed.
Love never dies in this novel by “a writer of addictive emotional thrillers” (The Independent).
Told from three perspectives A Particular Man is about love, truth and the unpredictable consequences of loss.
When Edgar dies in a Far East prisoner-of-war camp it breaks the heart of fellow prisoner Starling. In Edgar’s final moments, Starling makes him a promise. When, after the war, he visits Edgar’s family, to fulfil this promise, Edgar's mother Clementine mistakes him for another man.
Her mistake allows him access to Edgar’s home and to those who loved him, stirring powerful and disorientating emotions, and embroiling him…
