Scarborough Fair and Other Stories includes ten works by the author of the Nebula Award–winning The Healer’s War and many other novels. In “Final Vows,” Mu Mao the Magnificent, the feline bodhisattva from Scarborough’s novel Last Refuge, helps guide a reincarnated cat in solving the mystery of his own betrayal and murder. “Whirlwinds” takes place on the Diné Trail of Tears, when the US military force-marched ninety-five hundred Navajo people from their ancient, sacred homeland to the barren Bosque Redondo area surrounding New Mexico’s Fort Sumner. A coveted princess packs on pounds when a disgruntled suitor casts an evil spell on her in “Worse Than the Curse.” How is a plump princess to cope? And “Long Time Coming Home,” cowritten with Scarborough’s fellow Vietnam veteran Rick Reaser, is a story of the battles and ghosts many vets face after returning from the war. These and other stories capably demonstrate Scarborough’s breadth of skill.
As if it wasn’t bad enough already that because of her frost giant heritage from her father the king’s side of the family she was 6 feet tall when she was only 12 years old, poor Princess Bronwyn (the Bold) of Argonia was cursed at birth to tell nothing but lies. With her father away at war and her mother heavily pregnant, Bronwyn is even more in the way than usual, so she gets packed off.
In NOTHING SACRED, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough took a detour from her humorous classic and contemporary fantasies to write her "obligatory science fiction writer's end-of-the-world book." The bad news is the world has ended. The good news is LAST REFUGE is the sequel.
From the Nebula Award winning author comes this modern Christmas classic. The chief executive of a Seattle-based high-tech company, Monica Banks is a workaholic who has closed herself off to any kind of home life, family, or love. Then one snowy Christmas Eve, she discovers a ghost in her office computer. The ghost is none other than Ebenezer Scrooge. Awakened by a bright and lonely eight-year-old girl named Tina using the password “Humbug,” Scrooge is ready and willing to take his turn as a Christmas spirit. But he finds that the world has changed a lot since his day, and though he knows that the spirit of love, generosity, and forgiveness is eternal, it will take more than a little tech support for him to convince Monica before the morning light. “Reading Scarborough is a joy.”—Anne McCaffrey “[A] modern Christmas Carol…a beautiful story.”—Midwest Book Review
Determined to become an author of western penny dreadful novels like her idol, Ned Buntline, a young San Francisco newspaper editor christens herself Valentine Lovelace (after a floozie acquaintance of her father s) and heads east for the Wild West. She finds it in spades in the Texas Big Bend when she is kidnapped from a mule train by Comanches and ends up the guest of a ruthless comanchero, a sort of wild west warlord, after the Comanches are distracted by a. . .dragon? Fort Draco, as the comanchero fort is known, is as full of intrigue and nighttime carryings-on as a modern day romantic novel, but Frank Drake, the owner, is no hero. If Valentine wants to save herself and the less-guilty if not entirely innocent folks who live there, she must defeat heat stroke, gunslingers, a couple of fake rainmakers and their camel, hostile Indians, the voice haunting her dreams (not in a good way) and a dragon who not only is gobbling all the livestock and transportation in the area but is guarding the only water hole in fifty miles of drought-ridden desert. And she must do it all while taking good notes, of course. This is a western but not as we know it and a fantasy set where we re not used to it.
In a world where unemployment is obliterated by putting all jobless people in the military to maintain the endless ongoing warfare, Warrant Officer Viveka Vanachek finds herself in a weirder place yet. Captured, raped, and interrogated she is finally exiled to a remote snow-bound prison camp where she is placed in solitary confinement. It seems like the end of the world when she also becomes too sick to eat and starts seeing ghosts and hearing mysterious chanting within the noises of the camp. But her dreams tell her there is more to her prison than there seems to be and soon her delusions and reality start trading places.
What you see (at first) is not what you get in this collection of nine previously published tales of shape shifting and transformation. An Alaskan student of wildlife biology finds it difficult to write convincingly about what she knows. A proud and beautiful princess loses her popularity when cursed (in a way probably familiar to many readers) by a wicked enchanter. A lonely Cajun fiddler has a close encounter with his royal but scaly ancestor. In the secret story of the railroad that transformed the American West, Chinese and Irish workers compete to complete the job with a little help from supernatural friends. A lowly jeweler creates a wondrous bauble for the sultan's favorite, but his reward, an exalted royal elephant, eats him out of house and home until he unlocks her secret. An Irish nurse discovers the identity of the lone fiddler who plays at the bedside of a critically ill patient. A middle-aged woman, suddenly invisible, improves her love and social life during Mardi Gras. And a predatory bill collector meets his match in a story so dark that the author even changed her name. In these shifty stories, you'll be wondering who happens next!
Cindy Ellis knows about fairy godmothers. Her almost-stepdaughter is studying to be one and she is a close personal friend of Felicity Fortune, an Irish godmother. But she didn t suspect when she picks up Grandma Webster that the elderly, seemingly lost American Indian woman in traditional dress was a magical godmother too. When a self-serving skinwalker/witch inflames tensions between neighbors and pits sisters against each other in the best fairy tale fashion, Grandma enlists Cindy s help, along with that of a Navajo doctor, a Hopi rancher, and an unlikely champion, a dude who is related to coyotes and dreams of a home shopping network empire. Together they must defeat the evil that is threatening to destroy their world forever. Characterization, pacing, and folkloric expertise are all up to the series high standards, so Godmother-followers and others should greet this book joyfully. --Booklist
In Song of Sorcery, Book 1 of Songs from the Seashell Archives, hearthwitch Maggie Brown met minstrel Colin Songsmith and a unicorn named Moonshine while saving both her sister and the kingdom. All in a quest's work for a girl who can magically do anything she can convince her power is housework. To reward Maggie, the king makes her a princess, and therefore a good catch for the local noble bachelors. Only problem is, she doesn't want to get married. She wants to be with Moonshine, whose Unicorn Creed, as he understands it, forbids him to consort with anyone except a chaste maiden. It's rather a touchy situation, and so Princess Maggie abandons her crown and with Moonshine, she and Colin set out to see if they can find a loophole in Moonshine's creed. Of course, in the process they have to try to save the land of Argonia again, this time from a were-man, a revolutionary nymph, a town's worth of zombies, an ice worm and an evil wizard.
A portentous song sparks an unlikely adventure in this lighthearted contemporary fantasy by the Nebula Award–winning author of The Healer’s War. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch’s granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by the cat. She hears the song, which happens to concern her recently married sister and a gypsy. Convinced that she has to save her sister, she takes the minstrel, the cat, and her magical resources to Rowan Castle. The story is rich with descriptive details of setting and encounters with magical and fantastic creatures such as a talking cat, a lovesick dragon, and a bear prince. The characters speak in contemporary slang, which plays nicely against the traditional fantastic settings.
What started in the States ends in the States. The song-saving musicians are back home, with heads and hands full of songs they saved with the help of the Phantom Banjo, Lazarus. The soul-destroying devils haven t given up on killing off the music though, along with everything else that s maybe a little fun or keeps people human and sane. Even the debauchery devil, AKA Torchy Burns, AKA Lulubelle Baker (of Lulubelle Baker s Petroleum Puncher s Palace in west Texas) AKA Lady Luck AKA, believe it or not, the Queen of Faerie, has fallen on hard times. Her fellow devils are willing to see her demoted to the lower levels of hell, where a girl can t even get a decent mani-pedi. Her only hope is to convince one of the musicians--that would be Willie MacKai--to become her human sacrifice tithe to hell so she can get back her faerie kingdom. Once the magic banjo self-destructs, Willie decides to cooperate with Torchy. But the phone-in ghost of Sam Hawthorne and the music aren t done with Willie yet, though it takes a ghost train full of cowboy poets and all of his friends to save him.
When a woman’s bones are found in the icy dregs of the noxious Nor’ Loch, newly appointed sheriff of Edinburgh, Walter Scott, is called upon. Are these the remains of a drowned witch or religious heretic, or are they perhaps linked to something more recent and sinister? For although Edinburgh is known to be the center of literature, science, and medicine, it is also the haunt of body snatchers who prey upon the living and the dead alike, selling their victims for study by the student physicians at the medical school. When a band of Travelling People is forced to winter near the city, two young women are taken, one from her bed while she sleeps near her family. Justice from the settled people is rarely accorded to gypsies and the Travellers fear they will be murdered one by one by the ghouls stalking their people. A young gypsy named Midge Margret is sure that Scott will care. He befriended her family before and once more he promises to help find the murderer who prowls the snowy forest in a black coach. When a patchwork woman with supernatural strength begins hunting the streets as well, Scott and Midge Margret know the crimes are rooted in bloody dark magic. In order to catch the killer, the butchered victims themselves must testify. By Nebula Award winning author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Publisher's Weekly says, "Skillfully cross-stitching history, mystery and old-time urban legend... tension mounts steadily... an artful work.
Leda Hubbard, a forensic pathologist, gets the job of her dreams when an old school friend hires her to collect and authenticate the DNA of the famous Cleopatra. It s all great fun for Leda until, during a massive disaster, her colorful dad, the dig s security specialist, is killed by a group trying to hijack the precious material for a blend, a process in which the queen s DNA is used to import her memories, personality, and character traits to a new host. They screw up, however, and get Leda s dad s DNA instead. To keep the queen from going to the murderers, Leda blends with Cleopatra herself, learning a lot more about Egypt than she ever wanted to know.
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Godmother puts a new twist in contemporary fantasy with the assertion that fairy godmothers exist here and now, and they have magical power that allows them to intervene in real-world problems. What if someone wished for a fairy godmother would help the entire city of Seattle? An overworked, overstressed social worker named Rose Samson does just that when she makes an idle wish on a mustard seed. Felicity Fortune of Godmothers Anonymous shows up to help. Rose Samson is neither fashion model beautiful nor a twit, and she happily joins forces with Felicity Fortune, a “Godmother” who demonstrates that Grimm’s fairy tales are still relevant in our humdrum modern world. Fairy godmothers are on a magical budget, so every possible way they can get human beings or animals to assist one another, they will try, rather than using up their magical means. Felicity encounters many strangely familiar situations: a pretty stablehand named Cindy Ellis is mistreated by her cruel stepsisters. A rock star’s daughter, scared of the supermodel she married, runs away from home and encounters seven Vietnam veterans at an encounter session and retreat. One of them might be a big bad wolf, who knows? In all their encounters, Rose and Felicity try to blend their magical aid with realistic human initiative and social responsibility. Scarborough’s fully realized settings and the humor built into the mix of magical solutions and grim reality make this work an entertaining and compelling read.
Pelagia Harper, aka Valentine Lovelace, published her memoirs of her time in Draco, Texas and became an established writer-at least in her own mind. But when her father dies and her stepmother steals her royalties, she finds herself destitute. Also haunted. The ghost of her papa keeps popping up everywhere. When her father s old flame, Sasha Devine, offers her a way out of her poverty, Pelagia jumps on it before she knows what s involved. In 1897, the two ladies must travel North to the Klondike (the Wild West is a relative term as far as V. Lovelace is concerned) escorting the coffin of a man said to be Lost-Cause Lawson, a prospector. It turns out the man beneath the coffin lid is not as dead as he was supposed to be and somehow, Pelagia ends up being accused of murdering a Mountie. Apparently the sensible solution to that is to fake her own suicide. The upshot is that when she finally does arrive in Dawson City with Sasha, she is obliged to take employment as a dance hall girl and a flamenco dancer (Corazon, the Belle of Barcelone). Her boss seems nice though. Very sociable, especially with all of his new female employees. It isn t long before Pelagia learns that Vasily Vladovitch Bledinoff is giving the biting cold some competition. It isn t until her friend Captain Lomax receives a new book from England, written by a fellow named Bram Stoker, that she begins to get a clue what exactly is going on with the mode for black velvet neck bands the girls are all sporting. Then there s all of those really smart wolves, the threat of starvation and disease, and other strange and unusual wildlife. This book is about what life was like for a female artiste in Dawson City as it was during the Gold Rush-when everyone was there to strike it rich-except for the vampires, who were there for the night life.
SA science fiction thriller that feels like a futuristic James Bond . . . The idea of two minds inhabiting one body is a fascinating premise. The way they blend together and respect each other "s personality makes Elizabeth Ann Scarborough "s latest work a fascinating, often humorous speculative fiction. Midwest Book Review SScattered throughout the narrative, Scarborough provides amusing asides from the viewpoints of the Cleopatras. The modern day is filled with marvels from the viewpoints of the ancient queens, and Scarborough does a marvelous job of giving the world we take for granted a new angle of understanding . . . [She] has done a fabulous job of researching the past, and through the observations of the two Cleos paints a heartrending picture of loss and yet at the same time presents awe-inspiring descriptions of wonders that have managed, despite war, neglect, and outright vandalism, to survive for millennia to the modern day. SF Revu S[An] exciting speculative thriller . . . Scarborough deftly weaves her suspenseful web and then untangles the threads with her clear and concise prose, preventing a plot with dual-identity characters from spinning out of control. The DNA-blending concept is fascinating. . . retains the breathless action, frenetic pacing, and dry wit, [of its predecessor] with homages to Elizabeth Peters and Indiana Jones, and will appeal to a wide audience.
Dear Rosie, Being an apprentice fairy godmother is complicated. Not only do I have to go out and find good deeds to do, but for a sidekick I have that hit man that Felicity changed into a toad. I wanted to take the cat but she seems to have had a big funeral to attend. Felicity isn t around much. She keeps disappearing through a door in the guestroom that opens on the side of a hill. The swimming pool is weird too, and I could have sworn I saw someone dancing on the bottom. I am enjoying riding the flying horse and helping a boy who plays squeezebox and talks to swans though, so things are--you should pardon the expression--looking up.
This is a fantasy series about a bunch of folk musicians, good pickers and flawed but likable human beings, trying to reclaim songs destroyed by the evil forces (or devils, including but by no means limited to the Expediency Devil, the Stupidity and Ignorance Devil, and the Debauchery Devil) that want humanity to lose its humanity. Hauntings abound, as they do in the folk songs.
Available for the first time as an ebook pairing, these two short stories by author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough serve as an mystical introduction to her work. In MUMMIES OF THE MOTORWAY, a woman and her niece and nephew travel to an English resort where something ancient and bandaged awaits in the mist. SCARBOROUGH FAIR finds the author helping a woman reconnect with her past at the story’s namesake fair along the English seaside.
In these stories, a parade of fascinating felines tell tales of their lives. Guinevere’s cat, Gray Jane, tells what really happened at Camelot from her cat’s eye view atop the queen’s canopy bed. An Egyptologist’s cat, Shuttle, wards off a vengeful mummy by doing a favor for Bastet, the cat goddess. A Scottish cat, Tinkler Tam, stalks body snatchers through a gothic Edinburgh. Mu Mao the Magnificent, a bodhisattva cat who is the last tomcat in the world, searches for a mate in one story while in three others he assists his fellow felines during the transition to their next incarnations. A murdered cat named Mustard returns to avenge himself on his killer and protect his former household. The old soldier hero of a fairy tale discovers the secret of the 12 dancing princesses with the help of his trusty cat companion, Captain Shadow. These are the stories mother cats tell their kittens to provide them with role models, inspiring them to hold their heads and tails high.
As sheriff of Edinburgh, budding author, Walter Scott, makes a grisly discovery. Bones, bodies, and parts of bodies are found on the banks of the half-frozen loch. At first, Scott assumes the horror is the work of grave robbers. Then living women begin to go missing. A young gypsy, Midge Margret, makes the vanishings the talk of the town, telling of a mysterious black coach in the forest.
The six-volume set of the Songs From the Seashell Archives, all together as one volume! Magic, Dragons, Unicorns, Dastardly villains and more! Songs of the Seashell Archives is a six book collection of some of the finest fantasy writing you'll ever read. Includes Song of Sorcery; The Unicorn Creed; Bronwyn's Bane; The Christening Quest; The Dragon, The Witch, and the Railroad; and The Redundant Dragons.
Going on a quest with a handsome prince might sound like a dream, but Prince Rupert's cousin Carole comes to feel it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Carole agrees to accompany her hunky cousin to Miragenia to christen his baby niece. But it is really hard to even explain the situation to anyone; how the little Princess was stolen from her mother's side by Miragenians who demanded fifteen years of the first-born's life in exchange for a bit of help during wartime. Or how the baby was taken before magical christening gifts could be bestowed upon her for her protection and character development. The ladies surrounding Rupert (also known as Rowan the Romantic and Rowan the Rake) don't care about some baby and don't hear anything about the mission because they're too busy sighing over him. Crowd control is an obvious problem, as is extricating Rupert from more than one involuntary engagement. When at last the two, with the help of dubious questing companions including a love-stricken pink and purple dragon, arrive at the theocracy of Gorequartz where the baby had been fostered out to a queen, they find themselves in trouble of a completely different complexion. Their most deadly nemesis is none other than a giant crystal "god" seemingly created in Rupert's own image!
The ancient ballads of England, Scotland and Ireland are great stories to visit but nobody in their right mind would want to live there. There s a high body count for every ballad and a happy ending usually involves boy meets girl and they end up sharing a grave. The musicians who go to retrieve the songs, with the help of the magic banjo, Lazarus, know this, but the fact is, the songs also contain a great deal of magic useful in defeating the devils who are out to dehumanize humanity by stealing the music. The Queen of the Fairies, aka the Debauchery Demon, Torchy Burns, makes them a deal they can t refuse and the reluctant heroes find themselves thrust into the lives and deaths of ballad people they know are going to end badly. It s enough to make a picker take up accounting!
A former military nurse in Vietnam, Scarborough here presents a mostly realistic novel of Army nurse Kathleen McCulley's coming of age. Her tour of duty at China Beach puts the young woman from Kansas through the usual mixture of empathy for the Vietnamese and anger at the indifference or outright racism of army personnel. The unanticipated twist is a hallucinatory journey through the jungle with a one-legged Vietnamese boy, a battle-seasoned but crazy soldier and a magic amulet given her by a dying holy man.
Acorna’s twin daughters race to protect her legacy—and save their world—in this epic series finale with “plenty of stirring adventures” (Publishers Weekly). Khorii, the rebellious daughter of Acorna, the near-mythic heroine of her people, has tried to follow in her mother's footsteps in this time of plague and terror. But the pressure on the courageous young woman to succeed is tremendous, and the legacy she is expected to fulfill is overwhelming. The insidious enemy that has ravaged countless known worlds has left Khorii’s illustrious parents too weak to oppose it. Now, as the deadly foe prepares to launch its devastating final assault, it falls to Acorna's children—Khorii and her newly discovered sister, Ariin—to halt the brutal attack once and for all. But victory may prove too difficult, elusive, and ultimately fragile—and even time itself may be conspiring against the daughters in their desperate battle to save their family . . . and their universe. This is the dramatic conclusion to the breathtaking saga of the children of Acorna and Aari, from the Nebula Award–winning, New York Times–bestselling authors. “This popular adventure series demonstrates the storytelling expertise of co-authors McCaffrey and Scarborough.” —Library Journal “Fans will appreciate the authors’ genuine feeling for their human characters as well as for cats and dragons.” —Publishers Weekly
It is difficult growing up in the shadow of heroes revered throughout the galaxy. But that is the lot of young Khorii—daughter of the legendary Acorna and her lifemate, Aari—who must now follow her own destiny through a fantastic universe of wonders and perils. Khorii became a hero in her own right as she fought to save the universe from a mysterious, deadly plague that not even the healing powers of the Linyaari could stop. Now, confined with the rest of the survivors on Paloduro, the home planet of the disease, it seems as if the danger may be fading, and Khorii and her friends may be able to stem the tide of death and disease . . . until ominous signs indicate that the perpetrators are near and that the epidemic is only beginning. As old enemies reemerge and a shocking family secret is revealed, Khorii must unlock the malevolent mysteries of the deadly pestilence with the aid of her android "brother" before their unknown foes complete their covert mission to cripple the entire star system.
Although perhaps best-known for her lightly humorous fantasies and for her collaborations with Anne McCaffrey on the Petaybee series and the Acorna series, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough has also written The Healer's War, a classic novel of the Vietnam War, enriched with a magical, mystical twist, which won the 1989 Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1988. The Minneapolis Star Tribune called it 'A brutal and beautiful book.' Scarborough herself was a nurse in Vietnam during the war and she draws on her own personal experiences to create the central character, Lt. Kitty McCulley. McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians whom she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet, given to her by one of her patients, an elderly, dying Vietnamese holy man, which allows her to see other people's 'auras' and to understand more about them as a result. This eventually leads to a strange, almost surrealistic journey through the jungle, accompanied by a one-legged boy and a battle-seasoned but crazed soldier and, by the end of the journey, McCulley has found herself and a way to live and survive through the madness and destruction.
The presence of women psychologists has largely been blotted out of historical accounts of the discipline. "Untold Lives" explores why this has occurred and champions the cause of writing women into history by reconstructing the lives of twenty-five pioneering women psychologists in America. Providing a detailed examination of several gender-specific issues, the authors describe several ways in which the experiences of this group of women differed from those of their male counterparts. Each of five early chapters tells the story of one woman whose life or career vividly exemplifies a particular theme: institutional barriers to graduate education, obligations of a daughter to her family, the marriage versus career dilemma, limited employment opportunities, and discrimination by male colleagues. The book concludes with a collective portrait of this first generation and cameos that highlight their unique experiences. -- From publisher's description.
Our mysteries this issue include Josh Pachter’s “The Secret Lagoon” (Michael Bracken’s pick), Larry Allen Tyler’s “Just a Little Before Winter’s Set In” (selected by Barb Goffman) and a solve-it-yourself from Hal Charles (the writing team of Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet). A futuristic detective tale by Larry Tritten, and a classic Nick Carter novel from 1903, The Plot That Failed, round things out. On the science fiction & fantasy side, we have a vampire classic by Carl Jacobi, “Revelations in Black” (which was also the title story of one of his Arkham House collection); “Bullard Reflects,” by Malcolm Jameson, which is classic SF from Astounding; “Strike,” by Richard Wilson, about newspaper reporters coming a shipping strike in space; and “Three Bananas,” by Larry Tritten—which is one of his gonzo cross-genre mashups. Fun stuff. Plus the already-mentioned “Extended Family,” by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. (Did we mention that this is one of those stories you won’t want to miss?) Here’s the complete lineup: Mysteries / Suspense “The Secret Lagoon,” by Josh Pachter [short story] “The Game’s Afoot,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “Just a Little Before Winter’s Set In,” by Larry Allen Tyler [Barb Goffman Presents short story] The Plot That Failed, by Nicholas Carter [novel] “Three Bananas,” by Larry Tritten [short story] Science Fiction & Fantasy “Extended Family,” by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough [Cynthia Ward Presents, short story] “Bullard Reflects,” by Malcolm Jameson [short story] “Three Bananas,” by Larry Tritten [short story] “Strike,” by Richard Wilson [short story] “Revelations in Black,” by Carl Jacobi [short story]
Beloved by millions of readers, Anne McCaffrey is one of science fiction's favorite authors. Writing with award-winning author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, she has created the bestselling Acorna series focusing on the adventures of the brave unicorn girl. Now the exciting saga of the next generation begins. First Warning Khorii, daughter of the near-mythic Acorna and her lifemate, Aari, must contend with an overwhelming legacy to forge a path of her own through a universe filled with new adversaries and adventures. A simple journey home to visit her parents turns into a race against time when Khorii happens upon a derelict spacecraft drifting in space, its crew dead in their seats. But this gruesome discovery is only a dread harbinger—a deadly plague is spreading across the universe and not even the healing powers of the Linyaari can slow its horrific advance. Khorii, one of the few unaffected by the outbreak, must find the nefarious perpetrators and a cure before the disease consumes all in its path—including her beloved parents.
Queen Verity is queen only because her mother has said she has to be. She agrees because, after all, somebody has to liberate the dragons who have long toiled in the boiler room bowels of the city. Now that they are free, nobody has any idea what to do with them or how to feed them. Everyone is used to dragons being docile cogs in the machinery of industry, tamed into tranquility by food treated with a hypnotic tranquilizer, now largely destroyed, leaving a lot of huge hungry beasts roving the capital city of Queenston. Verity needs to act fast, before the dragons remember what dragons once did to feed themselves. The crown has scarcely mussed her hair before her political enemies have her shanghaied and sold to an outward bound vessel, leaving the kingdom to the random mercies of her erstwhile assistant, Malady Hyde.
Progress has transformed Queenston, capital city of Argonia. Once the land of witches, wizards, fairies, and other magical people and animals, since the Great War, the country has changed. Queenston, particularly, is now the city of contraptions and conveyances, including a modern international railroad. In the Great War Argonia's dragons allied with the armies to push back an invasion. For their assistance, the beasts shared what food remained as the country rebuilt itself. But with the war won, the allies came to "recover" the war-torn country, bringing with them new ideas and inventions, most of which only needed a supply of iron and a reliable source of heat for their boilers. The dragons were again recruited, tamed, altered and virtually enslaved to power Progress. Verity Brown is a modern girl. The magic of her witchy foremothers has become, if not actually illegal, highly unfashionable. The only magic that matters to Verity is her own curse, forcing her to know and tell the truth regardless of convenience. On Verity's 16th birthday, a hot-air balloon crash kills her father. The balloon's dragon and wrangler rescue Verity, but are blamed and sentenced to be put to death. Her honorable quest to save them and find her father's murderer takes her straight into the den of the wild and ferocious Dragon Vitia.
“[A] solid start of a new series . . . fast-paced adventure.”—Publishers Weekly Twin brother and sister Ronan and Murel are true children of Petaybee, the sentient planet that is their home. Like their father, they are changelings, able to converse telepathically with creatures and to transform into seals. The Petaybeans wish to protect the twins from curious scientists, but no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent—and that their search for knowledge will place them in the path of peril. Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing. To investigate its sudden evolution, the twins’ father heads out to the open water in his seal form—and is presumed lost. Only Ronan and Murel, with their remarkable talents of transformation, can hope to find him and bring him home . . . if they dare to risk exposure and face the dangers of the newly unstable sea. “The story is exciting and generously laced with humor, but besides those qualities, the characters . . . and their interactions are so well realized as to utterly charm readers.”—Booklist
In Changelings, bestselling authors Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough returned to the sentient planet Petaybee with a story of growth and transformation in the face of deadly new threats. The telepathic, shapeshifting twins Murel and Ronan found that Petaybee had plans for them as well. Now those plans begin to bear fruit with fresh possibilities . . . and dangers. Now that Petaybee is forming a new equatorial island, the planet has agreed to harbor a group of new refugees, workers indentured to the powerful InterGal Corporation. But the mission to collect the immigrants becomes a rescue operation when it is revealed that InterGal is doing nothing to help these survivors of a world devastated by a meteor shower. Murel and Ronan set out to persuade the frightened refugees to come out of hiding, leave their world, and bring along their sacred totem animals, the gifted sea turtles called the Honus. But the twins discover that they’ve taken on more than they expected: The Honus are not the only animals sacred to the refugees. There are also the Manos, intelligent sharks who have lost none of their predatory habits–and who cannot be left behind to die. When the Manos are released into Petaybee’s waters, a tragic misunderstanding endangers the whole resettlement operation. At the same time, the mysterious sea otters who once rescued the twins’ father are suddenly revealed to be much more than they appear to be. Now it is up to Ronan and Murel, with the intrepid assistance of their river otter friend Sky, to smooth the waters before a maelstrom of revenge destroys Petaybee’s harmonious way of life. But even as the twins uncover startling new facts about Petaybee’s past that will change everything they thought they knew about the planet, the forces of InterGal are gathering, preparing to strike. . . .
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.