Tanith Lee's finest stories as chosen by those who knew her best. Includes selections by her widower, John Kaiine, Storm Constantine, Craig Gidney, Mavis Haut, Stephen Jones, Vera Nazarian, Allison Rich, Sarah Singleton, Kari Sperring, Sam Stone, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Freda Warrington, and Ian Whates.
Four books of dark fantasy and eroticism from “a literary great . . . A series of Gothic, interlinked stories set in an alternate Paris” (The Washington Post). With these four books, together now in one collection, escape to a city known by three names—Paradys, Paradise, and Paradis—where you’ll find many strange stories and novellas exploring gender, identity, sexual transgression, and more . . . The Book of the Damned: A poet discovers a mysterious ring that drags him into a world of vampires. A young woman’s attack sows the seeds for a civilization’s downfall. And a writer receives a cryptic note that leads her to a sinister, ancient force. The Book of the Beast: A young scholar has just moved to Paradys to study at the university, and a beautiful phantom of a young bride begins visiting him, drawing him toward her. Soon, he will be infected with the horrific curse of the Beast . . . The Book of the Dead: Seven stories of enchantment, misfortune, corruption, and death are in the third volume of this fantasy series, including the story of a vengeful orphan tracking down his parents’ killer only to find a treacherous nightmare. The Book of the Mad: A labyrinth of ice connects three nightmarish versions of one city—Paradis, Paradys, and Paradise. In each of them, a story unfolds, breaking taboos, relishing horror, and conjuring the perverse.
For the first time in e-book format, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet from a master of dark fantasy. In the land of Santa Verensa, the great aristocratic Houses thrive on vendetta. Although their feuds are rooted in politics, generations of grievances have made the conflict dangerously petty and bitterly personal—a society where people live and die by the Name they bear. Romulan Montargo, heir to his family, revels in the feud. Meanwhile, Iuletta Chenti, the only child of Chenti Primo, the family’s patriarch, has spent her life sheltered. The Montargos and the Chentis have hated each other for decades, but when Iuletta first sets eyes on Romulan, she knows they are meant to be together. Determined to win his affection, she casts a charm on him to draw him to her, and the two fall in love. But Iuletta is already betrothed to the Belmorio heir, and her temperamental cousin Leopardo hates the Montargos with a murderous passion. If the young lovers are to be together, they must defy their families and defy their fates, reclaiming their chance at a happy ending. Tanith Lee beautifully reimagines Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of star-crossed lovers and bloody revenge with an added fantasy twist.
It's jang to be wild and sexy and reckless and teen-age. It's jang to do daredevil tricks and even get killed a few times...you could always come alive again. It's jang to change your body, to switch your sex, to do anything you want to keep up with the crowd. But there comes a time when you begin to think about serious things, to want to do something valid. And that's when you find out there are rules beyond the rules and that the world is something else than all they'd taught you.
Tanith Lee was one of the most influential and admired writers of the 20th Century. Since her first novel in 1971, right up to her death in 2015, her works resonated with generations of readers. She left behind an incredible legacy: a body of work which embraces every facet of the fantastic. From vampires to ghosts, fairies to robots, science fiction to fantasy and horror and back again: no-one could write like Tanith Lee! Telos Publishing is proud to present this special collection of 26 key works from Tanith's vast short story archive. Personally selected by her husband, the artist John Kaiine, these stories will touch your heart. They will caress your soul before ripping it from your body ... they will change the way you look at the world. 'A beautiful writer ... spot-on, with moments of wry humour amid her smooth, elegant prose; she gives the impression of days-of-yore and a faraway world, and tackles her creation's weird eroticisms, without ever being tempted into going over the top.' The Guardian 'Quite astonishing: unrelentingly skilful, unputdownable ... Accept no substitutes.' John Clute 'One of the most intelligent and powerful writers in fantasy.' Publishers Weekly
Tanith Lee is one of the most thought-provoking and imaginative authors of our time. In this unforgettably poignant novel, Lee has created a classic tale—a beautiful, tragic, sensual, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future. Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood. . . . 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?
In this “deliciously creepy” novel by the Bram Stoker Award winner, two feuding families face supernatural vengeance in a parallel 16th-century Venice (Publishers Weekly). In the City of Venus, two noble families—the della Scorpias and the Barbarons—have been locked in a bitter dispute over burial grounds on the overcrowded Isle of the Dead. But it is fourteen-year-old Meralda della Scorpia who pays the ultimate price for their rivalry. As years pass, parties complicit in her disappearance begin to suffer the consequences. Their shocking deaths can only mean one thing: A supernatural force has been unearthed from the city’s rotting understructure. As these bizarre events throw the city into a panic, a humble apprentice gravedigger is left to sort out the mysteries and subdue the ancient terror that threatens to destroy the entire republic.
In her now-classic tale The Silver Metal Lover, award-winning author Tanith Lee told the spellbinding story of Jane and her forbidden love for a robot named Silver. In this stunning follow-up, the legend of their tragic romance lives on. But nothing is as it was—or as it seems. . . . As an orphan growing up in the slums, Loren read her clandestine copy of Jane’s Story over and over, relishing every word. But Loren is no Jane. Savvy and street-smart, Loren could never be stirred by a man of metal, her passion never ignited by an almost-human—even one designed for pleasure. Still, when the META corporation does the unthinkable and brings back updated versions of robots past—Loren knows she must see Silver. And just like Jane, it is love at first sight. But Silver is now Verlis. If he was perfection before, he is now like a god. Yet he is more human than his creators think—or fear. While Loren doesn’t quite trust him, she will follow her twice-born lover into a battle to control his own destiny—one that will reveal to her the most astonishing illusion of all.
The planet did not rotate. On one side eternal day, the sun shining down hotly from the centre of the heavens. On the opposite side eternal night, the stars glowing coldly in the black and airless sky. Yet the planet had been colonised. In ages past civilisation had dug into the rock of the darkside and had thrived. Aristocrats vied with aristocrats, and the poor, as ever, struggled to keep home and body together against the ever-encroaching cold surface. To keep the lower classes happy, Vitra, the storyteller, spun romantic sagas on the popular network. She imagined a strange world on the sunside, inhabited by men and women enmeshed in crime and love, schemes and intrigues. Vitra believed she was making this up. But was she? Was there really another civilisation on the bright side and could it be that what she related was not fiction - but events which would inevitably send both worlds out of synch to mutual disaster?
Among its nineteen tales, this volume explores unnerving variations of Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, Snow White, and other classics, including three never-before-published stories."--Page 4 of cover.
A collection of nineteen splendid Tanith Lee tales hand-picked by the author. These extraordinary journeys into Lee's hugely popular fantasy worlds span thirty-one years of her extraordinary writing career and including four never-before-published stories: 'Clouden', 'Book Cover', 'Jade-Eye' and 'Questorday'. The tales in this anthology, saturated with magical color and light, have been compared to the writings of William Morris or Lord Dunsany. Sometimes disturbing, always beguiling, they will spirit readers into imaginary realms like no others.
In The Book of the Mad, a seductive nightmare unfolds in three parallel versions of the city—Paradis, Paradys and Paradise. Connected by a labyrinth of ice whose dangers are amplified by the will and emotion of its lunatic travelers, these cities provide the stage for a drama of mythical proportions, setting up a darkly dazzling finish to The Secret Books of Paradys.
Emerging from the burned remains of their old home, the ancient, elegant Scarabae ready themselves for a new life of seduction and feasting, until little Ruth ignites a blaze of chaos through the streets of London that threatens them all. This is book two in the Blood Opera series.
Anna, white-haired and grey-eyed, is born into the luxurious and mysterious family of Scarabae, a family of inhuman age and consuming passions. As she matures, it becomes clear that she shares some of their blood, for at three she appears sixteen, and holds knowledge known only to her dead sister Ruth... Suddenly Anna, along with a score of other children, is kidnapped and carried away to the end of the earth, to the pyramid hidden in the Southern ice that is home to the terrible immortal named Cain.
As she says of herself, Jay is a 'chancer'. But she finds she is out of her depth when she meets the beautiful artist, Jilaine Best. Jilaine has everything - looks, talent, and wealth - even so her life is imperfect. In adolescence she lost her mother in circumstances both mysterious and painfully unpleasant. Now, unable to conceive, Jilain's one wish is for a baby - even if another woman gives birth to it. Jay can't resist this opportunity - she tells Jilaine that she, Jay, is pregnant. And so the great lie begins. It seems easy enough - for there conveniently is the handsome young cab driver, only too willing to make love with her... But the spun web is already tangling. Can anything result from it but danger - and destruction?
Turek was raised as an orphan nomad, until one grim night when he learns of his heritage. He discovers he is the son of the last woman of a superior race long thought dead – a woman who once dishonored his warrior king father. Intent on revenge, Turek takes his father’s name, Vazkor, and embarks on a journey to find his mother – and murder her. Rediscover this realm of brilliant cruel beauty and seductive immortal ruins, of savage war and grand conquest, of falling stars and silver gods—with this 40th anniversary edition of legendary fantastist Tanith Lee's Birthgrave Trilogy.
Shon knew that the Taken must die. Death had touched them, and the evil spirits which issued from Death's Place to the east beyond the valley Took away the souls of the living. It was the law of Shon's people, who seldom ventured far from their simple huthouses in Pine Walk, except to hunt boar in the forest. And even the forest was not completely safe, for across the river at its eastern edge lay Crow Mork, Death's Place, and in the stories Crow himself, who was Death, rode there with Crow's People, Death's children, on strange four-legged beasts shod with white metal and swift as the wind. Lost in the dark forest, Shon encountered Death's Children. 'Don't go home,' the dead girl told him - he was almost sure it was a girl, though her face was a black void in the night. But there was nowhere else to go. They would kill him, of course; being Taken, they would have to. Yet Shon escaped that death - though he was to meet Death in Death's Place, and learn the extraordinary truth about it.
A recognized master fantasist, Tanith Lee has won multiple awards for her craft, including the British Fantasy Award, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. The final entry in Tanith Lee’s classic fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, Night’s Sorceries forms a breathtaking conclusion to a dark and intricate epic of demons, gods, and mortals. Azhriaz, daughter of Azhrarn, Demon Lord of the Night, has defied her father’s wishes. Taking on the mantle of Delirium’s Mistress, she escapes her island prison in the Underearth, where she would have spent her life in eternal slumber. With Prince Chuz, her lover and the sworn enemy of Azhrarn, she flees to the mortal realm of the Flat Earth to escape her father’s wrath. But Azhrarn will not be so easily deterred, and the lovers’ journey has not left the world untouched. In the wake of their flight, bizarre new enchantments emerge, exposing a world of chaos and mystery. The mortals of the Flat Earth are inextricably entwined in circumstances beyond their understanding, caught in the midst of grand conflicts of ambition and betrayal. Night’s Sorceries spins seven of these tales of wonder—of humans confronted with the supernatural. Trials of true love, tests of humility and fortitude, and startling transformations weave together in these lush stories of passion, revelation, and the human soul.
Traces, through diverse, horrifying encounters through the centuries, the trail of It, the beast created on the Fifth Day, which preys on the unwitting.
“A fast start to what promises to be an exciting, innovative fantasy series” from the World Fantasy Award–winning author of Night’s Master (Publishers Weekly). In the hedonistic atmosphere of an eighteenth-century Venice Carnival, gaiety turns deadly when Furian Furiano happens upon a mask of Apollo floating in the murky waters of the canals. The mask hides a sinister art, and Furian finds himself trapped in a bizarre tangle of love, obsession, and evil, stumbling into a macabre society of murderers. The beautiful but elusive Eurydiche holds the key to these murders and leads him further into a labyrinth of black magic and ancient alchemy. Why do secrets from Furian’s past seem tied to the mysterious Eurydiche? In Tanith Lee’s brilliantly imagined world of violence and terror, Furian must find a way to survive and stem the obsession driving him toward his hidden destiny.
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.
An epic fantasy adventure of wild creatures, enchanted landscapes, and noble destinies In a land of unending winter, the High Magus Thryfe travels with haste to the city of Ruk Kar to warn Vuldir, King Accessorate, of a growing force of envy and darkness. One of Vuldir’s daughters, the seventeen-year-old Saphay, is to wed the Jafn chieftain Athluan, but Thryfe foresees that the marriage will lead to the destruction of all the Ruk kings, their lineage, and their people. Disregarding the magician’s ominous words, Saphay sets off toward the East and her betrothed—only to meet disaster. Athluan, Saphay’s husband-to-be, hears rumors of a blond maiden in royal clothes entombed in a towering pyramid of ice. It is Saphay, and she is alive. The royal wedding ensues and soon—perhaps too soon—Saphay becomes pregnant. As time goes on, the son she births will show signs of a divine and heroic destiny.
Love, history or blood...which is the strongest? In childhood something black settled on Mechail Korhlen and drank from his throat. And later somebody pitied him enough to kill his poor deformed body when he became an adult. But then Mechail chose to return from beyond the veil to enact revenge - and to follow Anjelen, ruler of the sinister monastery sited deep in the forest. The fulfilment of his destiny had begun.
The free humans lived underground, secretive, like rats. Above, the world was a fearsome place for them - the open sky a terror, the night so black, and the striding machines from space so laser-flame deadly. Esther dared the open; she saw the sky; she saw the Enemy. And she was taken - captive - to the vast alien empty city. Surrounded by marvels of a science not born on earth, Esther did not know what they wanted of her. There was mystery in the city, dread in the heavens, and magic in the handsome alien man who came to her.
Searching for the beautiful witch Jemhara, the magician Thryfe at last finds her in the reinvented town of Kandexa, where a strange and passionate wooing begins. From this union a son is born - golden-skinned, red-haired, blue-eyed - and thus the Lionwolf returns to the world of men. Unaware of this birth, his original mother the goddess Saftri has begun her own search for her lost love Athluan . . . while elsewhere the black and shining ones, the Children of Chillel, seek to establish claims on the ice-locked planet. Beyond, over, under all, the evil god Zzth rages and plans the ruin of these separate and immortal lives. Strafed by the tumult of such conflicting powers, the be-wintered realm of mortals can only wait to learn its destiny.
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.
It is the season of the beast. Lured on by a brilliant diamond, the man-beast moves about the world in the sway of a pitiless, violent curse. In the frozen English countryside, a woman receives a rare diamond from her husband and unknowingly awaits the monster's unquenchable bloodlust. . . .
The enchanting, magical sequel to The Black Unicorn and The Gold Unicorn! After several years traveling, Tanaquil — a sorceress like her mother with the ability to mend — returns home only to discover that her true love has been betrothed to her sister, Empress Lizra. Broken-hearted and jealous of her sister’s happiness, Tanaquil is lured by a red unicorn into a mirror world where she encounters Tanakil, a diabolical version of herself. She discovers also several new powers. Powers she will need to foil Tanakil’s sinister plot of revenge.
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