I loved every gripping minute of this action-filled female-focused science fiction fantasy story. I was blown away by the unique worldbuilding of the militaristic knights versus dark magic tale.
The story focuses on Larissa’s training to become a knight and her battle not to be drawn in and corrupted by the very magic she must fight. I loved the juxtaposition of destiny versus desire.
This story kept me thinking long after I finished reading. Is destiny a choice or a drive? Do our choices create our destiny or does destiny drive our choices… is it really a choice we are making of our own free will, or are we making it because destiny is forcing us in that direction? Ooooo delicious.
There are so many betrayals and monster battles in this tale. It’s everything I enjoy, and I couldn’t put the book down. It’s an epic story that is very…
Larissa's inability to kill is a disgrace to her absent mother, Sword Matriarch of the Fair Lady's order, a sisterhood whose purpose is to hunt down sorcerers corrupted by the Evercry and slay them. But Larissa hides an even more sinful secret: she is drawn toward magic, and it grows stronger in her every day.
Larissa keeps a stranglehold on her gift until the day of her graduation test, when her misuse of magic leads her to failure. Prepared to be cast out of the sisterhood, she is instead brought into the…
The subject of friendship can be explored endlessly, as every friendship is unique. I am especially drawn to stories of unlikely friendships that look at the surprising and interesting ways that we show up for one another. One of the things that I see in all of the stories that Giselle and I have chosen, is that these unusual friendships make a difficult, awkward, or downright scary world a better place to be.
More than anything I love a picture book where a princess is also a librarian. In this story, the knight and dragon learn everything from books—like tail swishing and building armor, all of which lead to a big, pointless fight that leaves them bruised, burned, and battered. The librarian shows up in a book-mobile and hands the dragon and knight BBQ cookbooks. In the last illustration spread, they are shown with a hopping K& D BAR-B-Q joint. I especially enjoy how the armor and fire-breath that were previously used for fighting each other, are now used successfully for their restaurant venture. De Paola’s simple and colorful watercolors bring the story to life, and show that we can all get along really well!
What happens when a sheepish knight and a not-so-fierce dragon fight for the very first time? Well, it's no ordinary battle since the knight has to go to the castle library to learn about dragon-fighting and the dragon must dig through his ancestor's things to find out how to fight a knight! "Spontaneity of line and feeling are backed by zesty colors and a jovial, tongue-in-cheek tone to which children can relate—a top springtime choice." —Booklist "There's a swirl of good-humored life to the book." —The New York Times Book Review
We tell stories for many reasons, but one of the best reasons is to teach our kids (or remind ourselves!) how to navigate in the world. We’ve all read Aesop’s Fables and at the end, the moral lesson is spelled out. This ruins the conversations you can have with someone else about what the story was about. Instead of feeling entertained, we feel like we were being told what to think and how to feel. As a writer, I love to include multiple themes in a book so that, depending on the age of the reader, or how many times the story is read, new ideas jump out of the book and into your brain.
This beautifully illustrated book gently teaches that an act of kindness is always returned ten-fold. While my youngest child may not understand the biggest lesson in this book until he reads it to his own children, he did understand that helping others is always a good deed, and that sometimes we have to delay fulfilling our own wants and put others before ourselves. I read this book to my children over and over again, not only because we loved knights and tales of medieval times, but because the book has so much heart and soul in it, that it begs to be taken off the shelf.
This is the tale of a brave knight who sets out one day to serve his King. But as he rides toward the castle, frightened travelers seek the knight's aid and protection. Though he resists, something inside will not allow him to refuse. He presses on, but his mission is delayed again and again as the knight stops to help those in need.
Has he been loyal to the King by following his heart, or has he been an errant knight after all?
I’ve always been fascinated by history, and when I dreamed of being an author, imagined I’d write historical fiction. However, it took many writing detours to arrive there. (Nim’s Island, by the way, has no basis in historical fact!). When I first imagined the story that led to the Minoan Wings trilogy, I fell in love with researching this era, which is particularly intriguing because there are virtually no written records. Visiting the ruins of a four-thousand-year-old town on Crete under the guidance of an archaeologist who had not only excavated there but had become passionately involved with my imaginary characters, was an absolute highlight of my life.
I fell in love with the irrepressible Pagan as soon as I read this book. It’s difficult to imagine that life with the Knights Templar at the time of the Crusades was highly amusing – but despite the wealth of knowledge and detail that informs this book, it is wry and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Who wouldn’t love Pagan’s favorite curse: "Christ in a cream cheese sauce’?"
Wham! So here I am, standing in a sea of dirt, with a big mad Templar lobbing rocks at my head. Wham! Like some kind of martyr. Wham! He throws like a catapult.'All right, Pagan, that's enough.' (I should damn well think so.) 'Do you see what your problem is?'Wait - don't tell me. You are.It's twelfth-century Jerusalem, the time of the Crusades. Shrewd and scrappy Pagan has been plucked from the streets to work for Lord Roland, a Templar knight. Set against a background of mounting tension as Saladin's infidels close in on the Holy City, Pagan's Crusade is…
All the best books have a cat sidekick. Over and over, when people talk to me about my book, they pause in the middle of whatever they were about to say and go, “Oh my gosh, Biscuits,” and then launch into a list of things Biscuits the cat does, and how they are similar to things their cats have done, presumably up to and including throwing hands (paws?) with horrifying monsters that want to eat your heart. Biscuits is the latest in a long and proud tradition of literary feline companions, an essential element of many of my favorite and formative texts growing up.
The thing about a pet finding its way into your life at exactly the right time is that it does kind of feel like a divinity sent you a little helper to keep your life from completely falling apart while you are pretending to be a boy so you can become a knight or while you are on a writing deadline and very stressed out, which are two challenges that are equally difficult and noble.
From Tamora Pierce, the second book in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award.
Alanna, disguised as a boy, becomes a squire to none other than the heir to the throne. Prince Jonathan is not only Alanna’s liege lord, he is also her best friend—and one of the few who knows the secret of her true identity. But when a vicious sorcerer threatens the prince’s life, it will take all of Alanna’s skill, strength, and magical power to protect him, even at the risk of surrendering her dreams…
I’ve been fascinated with high fantasy since the moment my grandmother first presented me with Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Then, add in a Nora Roberts book when I turned sixteen, and voila, my love for all things fantasy romance was born. I crave tension, romance, sizzle, and some epic fight-to-love scenes that make my blood run hot. When I started writing, I knew the exact genre I wanted to focus on–romance. All. Things. Romance. Fantasy, paranormal, contemporary–I enjoy writing them all but in every single one of my stories there lies a thread of fight–of sizzle–because what’s a happily ever after if you don’t have to work for it?
I binge-read the first three books in this series in a matter of days. It is seriously incredibly to watch these two characters be thrown together. Both with dark pasts of their own, seeing them fight together toward a common goal is absolutely heartwarming even as it gets frustrating at times.
Heart-pounding romance and thrilling action meet deep world-building in Blade & Rose, a sexy and addictive romantic epic fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass and Danielle L. Jensen’s The Bridge Kingdom.
She’s bound to a monster. He’s bound to his oaths. Their bonds will break. And so will they…
An elemental mage who just wants her freedom, twenty-two-year-old Rielle is driven by one inevitability: she will destroy the impending arranged marriage to her cruel werewolf fiancé. Then she can happily spend her life independently, working as a mage on missions.
I am a world traveler, who has been blessed to live in many different countries, studying human interactions and culture. People matter. I’m fascinated to see how people react and relate to each other. As a proficient people watcher, it makes sense that when I read or write a book, characters are most important to me. They make or break the story with their quirks and hurts and hang-ups. It always gives me great pleasure to see my own characters grow as the story develops. I enjoy putting them into situations that may not be comfortable for them and then seeing what God does to bring them through.
Aelflet meet Cyr. Cyr, meet your match. I loved this spunky heroine immediately, her courage to stand up to a pushy knight had me cheering her on. And who doesn’t love a handsome, silver-haired knight who might have a reputation of being merciless but who proves to be the opposite. This D’Argent family has become part of mine and I hope you will invite them into yours as well.
THE WULFRITHS. IT ALL BEGAN WITH A WOMAN. A battle. A crown. The conqueror. The conquered. Medieval England—forever changed by the Battle of Hastings. And the rise of the formidable Wulfriths.
AN HONORABLE NORMAN Chevalier Cyr D’Argent convinced himself he joined Duke William’s invasion of England to reform its church and place its rightful king on the throne. But after a decisive Norman victory, the truth of his quest is revealed when his search for fallen kin leads to a Saxon grieving a boy slain by one of his own. Certain the defiant young woman will become the pick of…
For my whole life I've been fascinated by science fiction. I love watching Star Trek and reading books by Octavia Butler, and probably my favorite moment in school was when we were asked to read The Veldt by Ray Bradbury.As an artist I designed aliens for Star Wars products and am listed in the “Wookiepedia” online. My latest children’s book Alien Farm; Scary Stories for kids just won “Best Paranormal Book for kids” in the Firebird Awards. I also teach art to kids here in Mexico and I see their eyes light up when the assignment is to create robot designs or to draw spaceships and aliens.
This graphic novel is stunningly illustrated with deeply relatable characters. Pan is a young woman on a remote world working in her father’s body shop and sneaks out at night to visit her friend, Tara, and sometimes they go dancing. Tara’s life was not her own. As a princess she was shut off from society and was going to be forced to marry the man who won the Cosmo knights Battle. Pan helps to smuggle Tara off-world and ruins her life on her backwater planet. When two strangers show up at her home needing help, her life is turned on its head. She leaves her planet behind and begins her real life in the stars. An incredible, original story about space, knights, princesses, and lost friends.
Pan’s life used to be very small. Work in her dad’s body shop, sneak out with her friend Tara to go dancing, and watch the skies for freighter ships. It didn’t even matter that Tara was a princess… until one day it very much did matter, and Pan had to say goodbye forever. Years later, when a charismatic pair of off-world gladiators show up on her doorstep, she finds that life might not be as small as she thought. On the run and off the galactic grid, Pan discovers the astonishing secrets of her neo-medieval world… and the intoxicating possibility…
I’m the author of more than twenty fantasy novels, including the acclaimed Annals of the Nameless Dwarf series, and the hauntingly dark Sorcerers’ Isle duology. In my capacity as a developmental editor, I’ve worked on almost a hundred books for both traditionally published and independent authors. I was brought up reading classic fantasy and Sword and Sorcery, then spent more time than I perhaps should have playing D&D throughout the late 70s and the 80s. I confess to being an unashamed fan of Thongor. I’m an Englishman abroad, pining for the Sussex Downs and warm beer beside an open fire in a medieval pub I was once wont to visit.
The concept is what initially sold me on this one: the child of a “dark lord” figure. Ultimately, Incursion, the first of five books in The Necromancer’s Key series, is a concatenation of unmaskings as the reader tries to work out who the heir of the Necromancer Queen is—and, be warned, there are some big red herrings.
The protagonist, Anskar DeVantte, is a young man preparing to become a holy knight, yet as he works his way through the trials of initiation, buried powers and a past deliberately hidden from him by his superiors begin to manifest. He becomes involved (against the Order’s rules) with another trainee knight, a woman taken from among the subjugated local population and forced to adopt the ways of her people’s oppressors. They both begin to demonstrate phenomenal sorcerous powers, which draw the attention of the Order’s superiors, as well as that of the…
An immersive and ambitious new series from the Aurealis Award winning author of A Crucible of Souls.
A corrupted power stirs from beyond the grave. A sacred order of knights sworn to protect the world from evil. The Necromancer Queen will rise again.
Seventeen years have passed since the Necromancer Queen Talia was overthrown and slain, and her capital city destroyed by the Knights of the Order of Eternal Vigilance.
Anskar DeVantte, raised in the sacred disciplines of the Order, is now ready to face the brutal initiation trials to become a consecrated knight-sorcerer.
I’ve penned (so far) seventeen novels, most set during some historical conflict or other, all of them revolving around intense personal relationships (loyalty, love, betrayal, those sorts of profound truths). I tend to read the sorts of books I wish to write. I also teach creative writing at a university (VCU); I tell my students that if they want to really know what a character is made of, shoot at them or have them fall in love. In my own work, I do both.
Maybe this is cheating, but it’s still a book set during a war, albeit a fantastical one.
But come on: Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, Nimue, Pellinore, Gawain, Mordred, the Round Table–I may never have read a more powerful scene (or seen such, in the play) as when Arthur cheers for Lancelot to ride and save Guinevere from a fire which Arthur himself set!
Moving, with great, classic prose typical of the time and White’s contemporaries C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of The Once and Future King, White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. Here all five volumes that make up the story are published together in a single volume, as White himself always wished.
Here is King Arthur and his shining Camelot, beasts who talk and men who fly; knights, wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are…
