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The fortune teller had spoken the words, shown her the cards that predicted she would become the focal point of great events. But now, a captive of those who had invaded her land, Ara could only wait, hoping to discover the true path of her destiny. But in a world ruled by the war, what chance did Ara have to attain her heart's desire? Carried far from her home, alone among strangers, only the will of the goddess, the Lady Volmardra, could protect and guide her.

Yet the path the Lady had set her upon would lead Ara to the very heart of conflict. And through she might gain great wealth or lose it, become both pawn and player in the power games of princes and warlords, there was only one for whom she would risk everything, a soldier who some named traitor and others liberator, the man for whom she would strive to become-A HEROINE OF THE WORLD.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Space Is Just a Starry Night (2013).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine, October 2009. The story is included in the collection Cold Grey Stones (2012).

Read the full story for free at Fantasy Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Other Edens (1987), edited by Robert Holdstock and Christopher Evans. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1988 Annual World's Best SF (1988), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collections Forests of the Night (1989) and Sounds and Furies (2010).

He came to the Honey Garden looking for Cyrion. He was a man in grave danger, convinced only one man alive could help him. A man he had heard about in song and story. A man practically everyone knew something about. A man he had never met. CYRION Some said he was the stolen son of a western king, raised by nomads in the desert. A freelance swordsman, a sorcerer, a master of disguise, some said he attracted bizarre, uncanny events as some persons attract misfortune. He with hair like the sky of earnest sunrise, his fair complexion, his whiplash reactions and quicksilver elegance was like a being from another world. A legend. A myth. But was he real? And was he for hire?

Table of Contents:

• Prologue: The Honey Garden - (1982) - shortfiction
• Cyrion in Wax - (1980) - shortstory
• 1st Interlogue - shortfiction
• A Hero at the Gates - (1979) - shortstory
• 2nd Interlogue - shortfiction
• One Night of the Year - (1980) - novelette
• 3rd Interlogue - shortfiction
• Cyrion in Bronze - (1980) - shortstory
• 4th Interlogue - shortfiction
• The Murderous Dove - (1979) - shortstory
• 5th Interlogue - shortfiction
• Perfidious Amber - (1979) - shortstory
• 6th Interlogue - shortfiction
• A Lynx With Lions - (1982) - novelette
• 7th Interlogue - shortfiction
• Second Prologue: The Olive Tree - (1982) - essay
• Cyrion in Stone - (1982) - novella
• Epilogue (Cyrion) - (1982) - shortfiction

Life, death, love, and truth: major themes that frequently appear in Grandmaster Tanith Lee's fiction, are all represented in Dancing Through the Fire, one of the last collections she put together before her untimely death. The stories in this book have never before been collected, and four of them have never before been published. These tales will transport you from mystical lands to mystical worlds, corporeal manifestations of myth, and mythical interpretations of life, into realms you've never visited (and in some cases, could never have imagined visiting).

Among the reprinted stories are:

• "Comfort and Despair", which Publishers Weekly called "eloquent."
• "Fold," which editor Mike Allen called "surreal and haunting."
• "That Glisters Is," which, according to Voya, "leaves a disturbing aftertaste."
• "The Death of Death," which Colleen Anderson said is "rich with personality and style."

The four new stories include:

• "My Lovely," a chilling little tale of a house where people drop in.
• "Last Dancer," which tells of an annual commemoration that just may be the social ticket of the year.
• "Lora," the story of a god gazing lovingly upon one of her subjects.
• "Burn Her," which may be a semi-autobiographical telling of the life (and afterlife) of an artist.

In her obituary, the Guardian called Tanith Lee "one of the most influential revisionist and feminist voices in contemporary fantasy writing," and said her work has a "sensibility in which the relentless pursuit of personal autonomy and sensual fulfilment leads her characters to the brink of delirium, as well as to a fierce integrity that can co-habit with self-sacrificing empathy." The Village Voice called her "the Princess Royal of Fantasy," and enotes says she is "an accomplished technician and stylist. Her sophisticated presentations carry the reader along breathlessly, yet her style invites reading aloud."

Tanith Lee was born in the UK in 1947. Though she couldn't read until she was eight, she began writing at nine, and never stopped. She wrote over ninety novels and more than three hundred short stories. She wrote for television (Blake's 7) and various BBC radio plays. She won the World Fantasy Award for her novel Death's Master (1980). Endless awards followed, and she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Tanith died peacefully at home in 2015. She was married to the artist/writer John Kaiine, who will continue to keep her work in print via numerous short story collections and much more.

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?

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.

Disturbed By Her Song collects the work of Esther Garber and her half-brother Judas Garbah, the mysterious family of writers that Tanith Lee has been channeling for the past few years. Possibly autobiographical, frequently erotic and darkly surreal, their fiction takes place in a variety of eras and places, from Egypt in the 1940s, to England in the grip of the Pre-Raphaelites, to gaslit Paris and to the shadowy landscapes carved by the mind and memory. The themes of youth and age stream through these tales of homosexual love and desire. These stories recall, at times, the work of Lawrence Durrell, Colette, and Angela Carter.

Contents:

• Alexandrians
• Black Eyed Susan
• The Crow
• Death And The Maiden
• Disturbed By Her Song
• Fleurs En Hiver
• The Kiss
• Ne Que V'on Desir
• The X's Are Not Kisses

Publication of The Birthgrave in 1975 heralded a new and brilliant luminary in the firmament of modem fantasy. Ostensibly a sword-and-sorcery epic in the tradition of Robert E. Howard, this novel about a youthful heroine with incipient psychic powers astounded readers with its striking originality and intense emotional impact. Tanith Lee today is one of the most versatile and respected writers of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT represents a massive midcareer retrospective of her achievements over the previous decade.

Here are unforgettable tales of werewolves that prowl chateaux, an Earthwoman in exile on a distant planet, demons that inhabit bodies of the living dead, a race of vampiric creatures who prey upon a cursed castle, and many other works of exotic vision, mythic science fiction, and contemporary horror. Also included are two stories that have received the World Fantasy Award, "Elle est Trois, (La Mort)" and "The Gorgon," making DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT a distinguished one volume library of myth-weaving at its most eloquent and evocative.

Although acclaimed as the "Princess Royal of Heroic Fantasy," Tanith Lee has long since transcended genre conventions to create a body of work of remarkable psychological depth and artistic distinction. In her imaginative sympathy with characters, human or otherwise, Lee remains unexcelled in the portrayal of deeply felt emotions. Her stories explore many of the most significant themes in twentieth-century literature - life and death, coming of age, the nature of good and evil, love in all its manifestations. And she remains, above all, one of the great natural storytellers working in the English language ... Tanith Lee truly has become the Scheherazade of our time.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Rosemary Hawley Jarman
• Because Our Skins Are Finer - (1981) - shortstory
• Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Fur - (1984) - novelette
• Black as Ink - (1983) - novelette
• Bright Burning Tiger - (1984) - shortstory
• Cyrion in Wax - (1980) - shortstory
• A Day in the Skin (or, The Century We Were Out of Them) - (1984) - shortstory
• The Dry Season - (1981) - novelette
• Elle Est Trois, (La Mort) - (1983) - novelette
• Foreign Skins - (1984) - novelette
• The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette
• La Reine Blanche - (1983) - shortstory
• A Lynx With Lions - (1982) - novelette
• Magritte's Secret Agent - (1981) - novelette
• Medra - (1984) - shortstory
• Nunc Dimittis - (1983) - novelette
• Odds Against the Gods - (1977) - novelette
• A Room With a Vie - (1980) - shortstory
• Sirriamnis - (1981) - novelette
• Southern Lights - (1982) - novelette
• Tamastara - (1984) - novelette
• When the Clock Strikes - (1980) - shortstory
• Wolfland - (1980) - novelette
• Written in Water - (1982) - shortstory

Dekteon is a slave on the run, exhausted, beaten, pursued by his master's dogs. When the eerie horse and cart appear through the trees, and its hooded driver offers him shelter, he has no choice but to accept.

But as the cart rolls slowly through the mist, Dekteon becomes uneasy. Who would want to befriend a desperate fugitive? Surely only someone whose own future is even more dreadful than his own?

The world called Indigo turned upside down for Magdala Cled one unexpected morning. From being that world's only genetic misfit, the shunned outcast of an otherwise ideal society, she became the focus of attention for mighty forces. Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo...which only she, the hated one, could possible circumvent.

After she is left homeless in the wake of brutal family tragedies, 16-year-old Annie is shipped off to serve as a scullery maid on the exotic Smolte estate. Rupert, the handsome young son, is one of the first to introduce Annie to the perverse and obsessive world of a family consumed with all that is dark, decadent, and violent.

World Fantasy Award winning novelette. It oriignally appeared in the anthology Whispers IV (1983), edited by Stuart David Schiff. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII (1984), edited by Karl Edward Wagner, and Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy #10: Ghosts (1988), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. It is included in the collections Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986) and Forests of the Night (1989).

Today, tomorrow, always... the white-haired girl from the marsh is running for her life down a derelict highway.

In a future world polluted to the point of dissolution, the trees are dead, the sky is yellow, and no birds sing. Everyone and everything is tinged with madness. For Eva Belmort there seems no role except to become some man's plaything and drudge.

Then, one day, arrives the stranger with the gun - with blue eyes and hair as white as her own. Roaming the tortured landscape in his wagon, Steel is a seller of death... but for Eva he provides hope of escape from Foulmarsh.

Urged on by a power of love and hate impossible to fathom, Eva's travels now take her to distant towns and villages full of danger and surprises - and arouse in her strong passions she cannot harness...

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Tamastara or The Indian Nights (1984). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986).

The 20 short stories in this collection explore the forests of the imagination and the creatures that dwell there - the wolves and vampires; tigers and unicorns; dwarves, demons and enchanters.

Table of Contents:

• Blood-Mantle - (1985) - short story
• The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette
• The Tree: A Winter's Tale - (1984) - novelette
• I Was Guillotined Here - (1989) - short story
• Crying in the Rain - (1987) - short story
• Elle Est Trois, (La Mort) - (1983) - novelette
• Nicholas - (1989) - short story
• The Hunting of Death: The Unicorn - (1984) - novella
• A Madonna of the Machine - (1988) - novelette
• Red as Blood - (1979) - short story
• The Rakshasa - (1989) - short story
• Bite Me Not or Fleur de Fur - (1984) - novelette
• By Crystal Light Beneath One Star - (1987) - novelette
• La Reine Blanche - (1983) - short story
• Sweet Grapes - (1989) - short story
• The Tenebris Malgraph - (1989) - novelette
• Black as a Rose - (1987) - novelette
• Rachel - (1989) - short story
• Down Below - (1989) - short story
• White as Sin, Now - (1989) - novelette

Where the moon washed the deck, something sat, its huge head raised, more like the visage of a bear than a wolf, yet long-snouted, the jaws open. Cold eyes that had no soul in them mirrored the moon...

After the killing of his brutal father, golden and handsome Daniel Vehmund has sought refuge in an exotic faraway land. But his contentment is shattered when a fabulous diamond is pressed on him by a sinister graverobber. From that first fatal contact, Daniel is doomed each night of the fill moon to become something else... something dark and powerful and savage. And nothing that originates on this earth can destroy him.

Laura, a beautiful redhaired farm-girl, lives with her two awful sisters and her selfish grasping parents in the remote English countryside. Apparently condemned to a life of drudgery, all is transformed when she is wooed and wed by a wealthy local squire. But this gilded existence is threatened when a travelling magician persuades her besotted husband to buy from her a very unusual diamond. For this gem is "The Wolf", the diamond that had transformed Daniel Vehmund's destiny. And when he himself returns at last to England, his fate and Laura's are devastatingly intertwined...

Meanwhile some dark, malignant presence continues to prowl the woodlands and hedgerows... and seemingly nothing can curb its unquenchable bloodlust.

When Prince Draco sees the mysterious woman from the East, she entrances him as no one has before. His second-in-command Skorous suspects that she has secret motives when he learns that she has the power to transform things into gold. Is this her only power, or has she bewitched Draco's heart?

Tanith Lee, one of the best fantasists writing today, has crafted a masterful tale of desire and deception. She has written over a dozen novels, and has won the World Fantasy Award for her short fiction.

This short story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, March 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozios, The 1987 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Women as Demons (1989) and Redder Than Blood. A chapbook edition was published in 1991.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #135 September 1998. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Even in today's world there are corners where past evils still cast their terror-haunted shadows. When the young man, Christian, came to his inheritance - a once grand mansion in just such a remote corner of France - he knew only that there was some sort of alternate claim to that ancient building and its lands. Even as the villagers acknowledged him as lord of the manor, there came two from the forest to stake out their interest. And with them came fear and desire, terror and love...a combination which could be irresistible - and also fatal.

Epic in scope and thrilling in detail, Mortal Suns is set in the corridors of power in the mythical kingdom of Akhemony, which calls up the world of Ancient Greece. Acclaimed author Tanith Lee transports her readers to on ominous yet seductive alternate universe, as fully realized as Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon, where fate organizes the forces of nature to bring to ruin those who dare to control it.

Horrible screams pierce the night air as the Daystar, Queen Hesta of Akhemony, wrestles with the delivery of the King's child, beautifully formed except for one heartbreaking deformity--she is born without feet. Consigned immediately to the world of death, the lame infant is dispatched to Thon, the underworld temple, and baptized Cemira, snake, the name she will bear throughout a lifetime of darkness. It is only at the behest of Urdombris, the Sun Consort, that the child is restored to her rightful place as heir to the throne on Oceaxis. Recounting a deadly battle for power, pitting the forces of man against the supernatural, her story is one that will captivate, shock, and terrify.

White-skinned, black-haired Sovaz is beautiful and wayward, yet seemingly soulless - as if vampirised by some unknown force. Wife of a very wealthy but older husband, she is the prize ornament of his treasure collection, yet she is toying with a naive young American lover. And while the faces of this doomed trio converge, somewhere outside the glowing casements a creature of darkness prepares to feed...

Here are a novel and twelve short stories encompassing all the richness and variety of Tanith Lee's unique talent.

This fascinating and disturbing collection casts a new and chilling light on that ancient mythical creature, the mermaid... pinpoints the ultimate peril of mankind's fascination with the domestic cat... sucks us into the pulsing horror of bricks and mortar with a life of their own... investigates the dark and marvellous legends of tree spirits, and the tantalising allure of other carnal obsessions.

Table of Contents:

• Nightshade - (1993) - novella
• The Mermaid - (1991) - short story
• After the Guillotine - (1985) - short story
• Meow - (1981) - short story
• Il Bacio (Il Chiave) - (1983) - short story
• A Room with a Vie - (1980) - short story
• Paper Boat - (1978) - short fiction
• Blue Vase of Ghosts - (1983) - novelette
• Pinewood - (1984) - short story
• The Janfia Tree - (1989) - short story
• The Devil's Rose - (1988) - novelette
• Huzdra - (1977) - short story
• Three Days - (1984) - novelette

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror (1983), edited by Charles L. Grant. It has been rerprinted many times. The story can be found in:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1995), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Rivals of Dracula (1996), edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• By Blood We Live (2009), edited by John Joseph Adams
• Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (2012), edited by Paula Guran

It is included in the collections Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986) and Blood 20: Tales of Vampire Horror (2015).

BFA and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1979. It can be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 6 (1980), edited by Lin Carter and The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy By Women (1995), edited by A. Susan Williams and Richard Glyn Jones. It is included in the collections Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer (1983), Forests of The Night (1990) and Tanith By Choice: The Best of Tanith Lee (2017).

How would it be if Snow White were the real villain & the wicked queen just a sadly maligned innocent? What if awakening the Sleeping Beauty should be the mistake of a lifetime--of several lifetimes? What if the famous folk tales were retold with an eye to more horrific possibilities? Only Tanith Lee could do justice to it.

In RED AS BLOOD, she displays her soaring imagination at its most fantastically mischievous. Not for nothing was the title story named as a Nebula nominee. Not for nothing was the author of THE BIRTHGRAVE & THE STORM LORD called by New York's Village Voice, "Goddess-Empress of the Hot Read." Here are the world-famous tales of such as the Brothers Grimm as they might have been retold by the Sisters Grimmer! Fairy tales for children? Not on your life!

Table of Contents:

• Paid Piper - (1981) - shortstory
• Red as Blood - (1979) - shortstory
• Thorns - (1972) - shortstory
• When the Clock Strikes - (1980) - shortstory
• The Golden Rope - novelette
• The Princess and Her Future - shortstory
• Wolfland - (1980) - novelette
• Black as Ink - novelette
• Beauty - novelette

A vampiric Snow White whose pious stepmother is her only salvation....

A supernatural Cinderella who strikes at midnight, leaving behind a prince mad with desire....

A sleeping beauty never meant to be woken...

In her World Fantasy Award-nominated short story collection, Red as Blood, Tanith Lee deconstructed familiar fairy tales, recapturing their original darkness and horror in haunting new interpretations. Behind gilded words and poised princesses, she exposed a sinister world of violence, madness, and dangerous enchantments.

With Redder than Blood, Lee resumes the tradition of twisting tales. 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.

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.

About midday the white cat emerged from Grace's open window and walked along the sills of the Rookery, jumping from disastrous ledge to ledge, and down and up the vertiginous heights.

It surveyed the slums, the winding streets that were in parts so narrow, only cats could walk two abreast. Also, from the roof, later, the distant avenues of infamous Black Church where, in antique times, dark priests had had a monastery and worshipped the Devil.

Then, in the night, as the moon rose, the white cat sang. It sang in a high and sacred voice...

Grace is green-eyed, beautiful, a psychic healer--and also a whore. She walks the streets of Black Church to make a living.

After years of horror and poverty as a brothel slave, Saul Anger was adopted into a life of ease, and he has now taken on the mantle of his dead uncle's house, as well as the leadership of a secret society whose figurehead is Anubis, the jackal god of Egypt. Dedicated to justice and retribution, this society will destroy those it deems evil. There must always be blood.

One midnight, in the great clock-tower of the city a man hangs himself--and secret desires are let loose. A demon now stalks the streets and alleys, slaying the wicked and the innocent alike. But can Saul locate the source of destruction and tame it?

Or will beautiful Grace--who has fallen in love with him--be able to stem this tide of madness and primeval terror? For, aided by the goddess Pasht and by all the cats of the city, perhaps she alone can turn back the clock.

World Fantasy Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Weird Tales, Summer 1999.

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.

he tales in Space is Just A Starry Night range across genres, as elegant as the field of stars spanning a clear dark sky. A lone survivor of plague receives a mysterious visitor; a prison planet tortures political prisoners by methodically manipulating their memories; a young woman uncovers the ghastly truth about the cryogenically preserved ancestor who's been thawed; a ship's officer struggles with his suspicions about a shy drab woman taking passage aboard a ship of sun-worshipers--Tanith Lee explores these and other scenarios in her ever intense sensual prose.

Table of Contents:

• The Beautiful Biting Machine - (1984) - novelette
• Moon Wolf - (2004) - shortstory
• Felixity - (1995) - shortstory
• The Thaw - (1979) - novelette
• You Are My Sunshine - (1980) - novelette
• With a Flaming Sword - (2013) - shortfiction
• Black Fire - (2011) - shortstory
• Written in Water - (1982) - shortstory
• Tonight I Can Sleep Quietly - (2004) - shortfiction
• Stalking the Leopard - (2004) - shortstory
• Dead Yellow - (2008) - shortstory
• By Crystal Light Beneath One Star - (1987) - novelette
• A Day in the Skin (or, The Century We Were Out of Them) - (1984) - shortstory
• Within the Ghost - (2013) - shortfiction

In a parallel world, in a Renaissance Italy just a little bit different from that we know, a dashing young man named Romulan met a lovely young lady named Iuletta. But between their romance stood the hatred of their feuding families - and a witchcraft that really worked.

All the magic and mystery of fabled India is woven into these marvel tales of seven strange nights. For that vast land which many have conquered and none have subdued is the home of ten thousand gods and a hundred thousand demons - and the teeming races that dwell on its shrouded plains and marbled cities have kept their mystic secrets.

Only the vivid imagination of Tanith Lee, who has been rightly called "Princess Royal of Heroic Fantasy," could penetrate the nighted veils of India's lore. In Tamastara she does so to delight the mind and season with scented curry the imagination of the West.

Here are hidden gods and demonic possession, here are were-beasts and subterranean terrors, here are beings transformed and souls reborn, here is Terror and Wonder. Winner of the World Fantasy Award and the August Derleth Award, Tanith Lee is at her best in this new book.

Table of Contents:

• Foreign Skins - novelette
• Bright Burning Tiger - (1984) - shortstory
• Chand Veda - (1983) - shortstory
• Under the Hand of Chance - novelette
• The Ivory Merchants - novelette
• Oh, Shining Star - novelette
• Tamastara - novelette

Tanith Lee is one of the finest writers to ever grace the field of speculative fiction. The author of around 100 novels and several hundred short stories, she wrote two episodes of the iconic TV series Blake's 7, was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award -- which she followed with two World Fantasy Awards, shortlistings for all manner of accolades including Nebula and BSFA Awards--and in 2013 she received a 'Lifetime Achievement Award' from the organisers of World Fantasy Con.

I would never dream of attempting to compile a 'Best of' collection of Tanith's work, so instead I've asked others to do so for me. Tanith By Choice features many of her finest stories, as chosen by those who knew her.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Ian Whates
• Red As Blood - (1979) - short story
• The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette
• Bite-me-Not or Fleur de Fur - (1984) - novelette
• Jedella Ghost - (1998) - short story
• Medra - (1984) - short story
• The Ghost of the Clock - (2003) - novelette
• Cold Fire - (2007) - short story
• The Crow - (2010) - short story
• White As Sin, Now - (1989) - novelette
• After the Guillotine - (1985) - short story
• Taken at His Word - (2010 - short story
• The Isle is Full of Noises - (2000) - novella

An epic fantasy of eroticism, sorcery, blood and vampires, by a prolific writer of fantasy and science fiction works, who has won the World Fantasy Award on several occasions. This novel looks at the traditional idea of vampires in a new and terrifying way.

The princess handed Fearless a black book, bound in gold, entitled 'The Hoarded Dragon.' Not to be read by the faint-hearted. Fearless read it aloud to Prince Jasleth. 'The dragon is as high as a house, with scales no sword can pierce, and a mouth so huge it can swallow an army in one gulp -- and once did just to prove it. It has nine hundred and fifty-four teeth, each three inches long and as sharp as a needle. It never sleeps, and it hasn't been fed in a hundred years..' 'Let's go home,' said Jasleth."

Prince Jasleth is a young man under a spell to become a raven for one hour every day, on a quest to break the curse. Along the way he joins up with a horde of princes and meets many dangers, including enchanters, ogres, impossible tasks, and a beautiful princess who will stop at nothing to prevent them all from gaining the Dragon Hoard.

It is the eve of the French Revolution. The aristos are drinking life to the dregs, indulging in every conceivable sensual vice as if there were no tomorrow, while the citizens, miserable in their poverty, seethe with envy and hatred in a sorcerous Paris, beautiful in the center, rotting into mighty slums around the edges.

In this sweeping novel, Tanith Lee depicts the savage spirit of Year I, following the life of journalist, pamphleteer and patriot Camille Desmoulins through these turbulent days. A fascinating and complex creature of the mind who maneuvered through all levels of Paris society, Desmoulins was the journalist and voice of the Revolution. Silenced by the guillotine during the Terror at age 28, Desmoulins, with his circle of friends, is the heart and soul of this compelling novel.

World Fantasy Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Shadows 5 (1982), edited by Charles L. Grant, and was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine, February 2014. The story can also be found in the anthology Mythic Journeys (2019), edited by Paula Guran. It is included in the collections The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales (1985), Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986), Forests of the Night (1989) and Tanith By Choice: The Best of Tanith Lee (2017).

Read the full story for free at Nightmare Magazine.

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."

Table of Contents:

• The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette
• Anna Medea - (1982) - novelette
• Meow - (1981) - shortstory
• The Hunting of Death: The Unicorn - (1984) - novella
• Magritte's Secret Agent - (1981) - novelette
• Monkey's Stagger - (1979) - shortstory
• Sirriamnis - (1981) - novelette
• Because Our Skins Are Finer - (1981) - shortstory
• Quatt-Sup - shortstory
• Draco, Draco - (1984) - novelette
• La Reine Blanche - (1983) - shortstory

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #142 April 1999. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1979. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9 (1980), edited by Terry Carr, The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: SF by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. The story is included in the collections Women as Demons (1989) and Space Is Just a Starry Night (2013).

"A story by Tanith Lee unveils a voice alone, a true Scheherazade, someone with a distinctive vision of the world and who explored that world, or those worlds to be accurate, with a highly perceptive and mindful set of eyes."
From the introduction, 'An Awareness of Worlds', by Mike Ashley

This anthology of twenty-eight tales comprises all the short stories by Tanith Lee that were published in the seminal magazine Weird Tales during her lifetime. Some of them are previously uncollected, and appeared in print only in the magazine, so will be new to many of Tanith's fans.

Tanith Lee's highly-respected and influential work spanned every genre, and this sumptuous collection demonstrates the range of her versatility. From the dark high fantasy of 'The Sombrus Tower', through the Arthurian-influenced 'The Kingdoms of the Air', the achingly beautiful 'Stars Above, Stars Below' of a science-fantasy Mars, the sinister retelling of a fairy tale in 'When the Clock Strikes', the real-world mysteries of 'The Unrequited Glove' and 'Arthur's Lion', and the almost whimsical steampunk of 'The Persecution Machine', The Weird Tales of Tanith Lee showcases the myriad styles of the writer rightly known as the High Priestess of Fantasy.

WFA nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology The Fair Folk (2005), edited by Marvin Kaye.

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.

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.

An unhappy teenager runs away from home to the seaside when she finds out that her mother is having an affair. Finding friends amongst a group of junkies and beggars and living in a rotting hotel, Hesta spends the summer there, but when winter arrives, she wonders what lies ahead for her.

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.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1989) - essay
• The Demoness - (1976) - short story
• Deux Amours d'une Sorciere - (1979) - short story
• The Unrequited Glove - (1988) - short story
• Gemini - (1981) - novelette
• Into Gold - (1986) - novelette
• The Lancastrian Blush - (1989) - short story
• You Are My Sunshine - (1980) - novelette
• The One We Were - (1984) - novelette
• The Truce - (1976) - short story
• The Squire's Tale - (1980) - short story
• Discovered Country - (1989) - novelette
• Winter White - (1978) - short story
• Written in Water - (1982) - short story
• Mirage and Magia - (1982) - short story
• The Thaw - (1979) - novelette
• Northern Chess - (1979) - short story

Drawn to the ominous house of Scarabae by the promise of passion, Rachaela soon finds herself a prisoner of her own desire, seduced into a dark and dangerous existence by a lover who bears her family name.

Emerging from the burned remains of her 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.

A new tale of horror featuring the mysterious vampiric family of Scarabae follows Anna, a family member, as she and twenty other children are kidnapped and taken to a pyramid under the southern ice by an immortal named Cain.

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 traveling south of the castle, Lilune and Lir realize that they aren't alone - for an ancient, infectious evil accompanies them, which instils terror in everyone they meet. Lir dislikes arrogant Lilune, but finds himself intrigued by her and the source of evil. Is it within Lilune, or does it come from a deeper source? When the pair becomes separated, he carries on searching for her. Finally, Lilune returns to the 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...

He was a prince, he knew. And he was riding a white horse. But who he was, and how he got there, he had no idea. The horse didn't know either - it was good at protecting him from the many monsters that came to attack him, and it could turn into a lion, for difficult jobs like climbing mountains, but although it told the prince many things, it always denied that it could speak.

The prince needed all the help he could get. During a series of adventures in which he encountered two witches (one good and one bad), escaped from Beesles, Oggrings, Skolks, and some of the other extremely unpleasant creatures that lived in the world, and acquired a companion, Gemant the Red Knight, the Prince discovered from Vultikan the Hoiler that he was the Looked-For Deliverer. VultiKan gave him a special sword and a suit of armour to equip him for the fray. His foe was Nulgrave, and the very mention of the word terrified everyone.

Suffering from confusion himself, and in a world which operated by no logic he could fathom, the prince's task was monumentally hard. But Nulgrave was horribly serious, so he persevered, and the result was as crazy and funny - and satisfying as anyone could wish.

Also released as Wolf Tower

All her life, Claidi has endured hardship in the House, where she must obey a spoiled princess. Then a golden stranger arrives, living proof of a world beyond the House walls. Claidi risks all to free the charming prisoner and accompanies him across the Waste toward his faraway home. It is a difficult yet marvelous journey, and all the while Claidi is at the side of a man she could love. That is, until they reach his home... and the Wolf Tower.

Also released as Wolf Star.

Abducted from her wedding to Argul, Claidi finds herself crossing an ocean to a strange land, menaced by giant flowers, mysterious animals, and the Rise. At dusk each night there is the rising of the flaming Wolf Star and the landscape becomes a-lurk with Vrabburrs. Is she lost to Argul forever?

Also released as Wolf Queen

Claidi is eager to reunite with her fiance Argul-but when she finally reaches his camp, she finds that someone has been spreading ugly lies about her, and Argul is nowhere to be found. Undaunted, Claidi sets out to search for him. Her quest brings her to the icy threshold of a tower, and within it she encounters another shadow from her past-a powerful woman Claidi believes is her mother. But the truth is far more complicated, andClaidi once again finds herself at the dark center of conspiracy and intrigue. Claidi's third journal will hold readers to the very last page.

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 Oronel Novendot of the Wolf Tower, who tells her 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?

Omnibus edition of Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. This omnibus was also issued under the confusing title of Drinking Sapphire Wine.

In a world dedicated to pleasure, one young rebel sets out on a forbidden quest--.

Published for the first time in a single volume, Tanith Lee's duet of novels set in a hedonistic Utopia are as riveting and revolutionary as they were when they first appeared two decades ago.

It's a perfect existence, a world in which no pleasure is off-limits, no risk is too dangerous, and no responsibilities can cramp your style. Not if you're Jang: a caste of libertine teenagers in the city of Four BEE. But when you're expected to make trouble--when you can kill yourself on a whim and return in another body, when you're encouraged to change genders at will and experience whatever you desire--you've got no reason to rebel...until making love and raising hell, daring death and running wild just leave you cold and empty.

Ravenous for true adventures of the mind and body, desperate to find some meaning, one restless spirit finally bucks the system--and by shattering the rules, strikes at the very heart of a soulless society....

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.

It's the brilliant author of THE BIRTHGRAVE in a strikingly different style and a startlingly different sf novel.

Four-BEE was an utopian city. If you didn't mind being taken care of all your long long life, having a wild time as a "jang" teenagers able to do anything you wanted from killing yourself innumerable times, changing bodies, changing sex, and raising perpetual hell, it could be heaven.

But for one inhabitant there was always something askew. He/she had tried everything and yet the taste always soured. And then he/she succeeded in committing the one illegal act-and was thrown out of heaven forever.

But forever is not a term any native of that robotic utopia understood. And so he/she challenged the rules, declared independence, and set out to prove that a human was still smarter than the cleverest and most protective robot.

A unique collection of eleven stories from Britain's foremost Mistress of the Fantastic; all are previously uncollected, two have never appeared in print before and five are previously unpublished and wholly original to this collection.

Table of Contents:

• In Praise of Happy Accidents: An Introduction - (2012) - essay by Ian Whates
• Clockatrice - (2009) - novelette
• Malicious Springs - (2003) - shortstory
• The Greyve - (2012) - shortstory
• The Heart of Ice - (2008) - shortstory
• Calinnen - (2008) - shortstory
• En Forêt Noire - (2005) - shortstory
• Fr'eulogy - (2012) - shortstory
• The God Orkrem - (2011) - shortstory
• In the Country of the Blind - (2012) - shortstory
• My Heart: A Stone - (2012) - shortstory
• Killing Her - (2012) - shortstory

Son of both god and mortal, his destiny must be death or power everlasting.

The setting is a world of eternal winter, where once thrived hit climates and exquisite luxury. Saphay, neglected daughter of a sub-king in the civilised west, is sent off to marry a leader of the barbaric Jafn...not realizing that her own father has arranged for her to be betrayed and abducted on his perilous journey.

Escaping her pursuers, then dragged into the depths of an arctic sea, Saphay is miraculously discovered by her Jafn betrothed. She is still alive, though entombed in an ice pyramid, and their marriage proceeds as intended. However, when it becomes evident that Saphay is not only carrying a child already but is also the focus of a sorcerous and preternatural force, dark suspicions are aroused about the infant's true origin... Driven out into the icy wilderness to face certain death, Saphay somehow manages to reach unwelcome shelter. There her son can grow up safely in exile, while displaying all the skills of a future hero... and a future god.

Killed by the power of the god Zezeth, his true father, Lionwolf has been cast into a bleak and icy hell lit just by a cold blue sun. Here he and others of the living dead must wage endless combat and war, to appease the whim of a deathly King whose face is made of stone. But when Lionwolf encounters the King's wife, she is none other than the beautiful, god-fashioned Chillel, his own former lover - and nemesis.

As Lionwolf struggles in the toils of Hell, elsewhere in the hell-cold ice-age of the mortal earth, men and women work out their own destinies. An empire has fallen. Ru Karismi, Capital of the Kings, has been abandoned to the poisons of the White Death. Reivers cross the lands of the Jafn and the Ruk, preying wherever they wish. Against this unsettled backdrop, Jemhara the sorceress determines to save the Magician Thryfe from a dire self-inflicted punishment, and Saphay, now a goddess of the far north, seeks to lead her people to a new world. And from the depths of an ice-locked sea Zezeth's other terrifying son, the mountainous whale-leviathan Brightshade, is once more rising for vengeance.

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.

DRACULA?

A mere figment of superstition, a thing that could not exist.

SABELLA?

A very real person, an enticing girl of flesh and warmth - who detested the sunlight, who required the blood of young men to feed upon, who was all that Dracula was said to be except never one of the "undead." Sabella was alive, sensual and dangerous.

She lived on Nova Mars, a colony of Earth and very much like the world we know. She knew what she was and her very existence was a peril to the all-too-human population of that world.

Out of the dusk he comes striding, the stranger, the man in black, inevitable as death itself: Parl Dro--Ghost Slayer.

Some have bought his services for gold, and some have blessed him for his work. But not everyone welcomes an exorcist who will remorselessly deprive them of their beloved dead.

Dro began his vocation at an early age. And now he will not be turned aside, no matter how you may threaten, curse or weep. He is seeking too the greatest stronghold of the deadalive: Ghyste Mortua, the ghost town in the mountains, and he means to destroy it. If he will face that, what use the pleas of the desperate sisters, Cilny and Ciddey, what use the rage of Myal, with his genius for music and his imperfect talent for crime?

Only one thing, it seems, motivates Parl Dro. His determination to kill the dead.

Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood....

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, erotic, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future.

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 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.

NIGHT'S MASTER is the first book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the Night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever...

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Discover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

Death's Master, winner of the August Derleth Award for Fantasy, is the second book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of the One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

Uhlume, Lord of Death, second of the Lords of Darkness, King of Shadow and Pallor, makes an unusual bargain which sets in motion an intricate sequence of events that entangle men and gods, queens and kings, sorcerers and witches, and lowly wanderers. When the secret to immortality falls into human hands, dark magic and wickedness are unleashed, testing the bounds of mortal love and sanity, and questioning the nature and purpose of life itself.

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Rediscover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

Delusion's Master is the third book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

Chuz, Prince Madness, third of the Lords of Darkness -- beauty on one side, foul corruption on the other -- "takes pity" on the world. In his gentle soft embrace mortal minds repose in a tide of illusion and twisted desire. Yet no one is immune from the sweetest madness of all, and even immortals fall at the cast of the bone dice...

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Discover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

Delirium's Mistress is the fourth book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.

Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle.

She is the neglected daughter of Azhrarn, Demon Lord of Darkness, and she has many names -- Soveh, Azhriaz, Sovaz, Atmeh. Half demon, half mortal, she is Moon's Fire, vulnerable child, vengeful sorceress, terrifying Goddess of a wondrous city of cruel delirium that spans thirteen kingdoms, and a humble priestess of life's true wisdom. When her lover, Chuz, Prince Madness himself, is taken from her, she who is Daughter of Wickedness and Delirium's Mistress finds herself on a journey spanning an eternity of lives, in her search for love and redemption, and the ultimate truth of humanity, Godhood, and self.

Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.

Discover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.

In the age of demons, when the Earth was still flat, Prince Chuz, Delusion's Master, stole Azhriaz, daughter of the Demon Lord of Night, from the underworld citadel meant to be her eternal prison. Pursued by the vengeful Lord of Night, Chuz and Azhriaz fled to the world above, to the lands of mortal men, seeking a haven for their love. Yet when demons dwelt in the realm of men, terror and wonders were bound to result.

And so it was for all who came in contact with Chuz, Azhriaz, and their dread pursuer. As all 3 worked their powerful sorceries, men and women, from the highest lords to the lowest peasants, were led into new kingdoms of enchantment where a man could learn to commune with beats, where magicians found their spells recast, where a woman's kindness could turn back time, and where a mortal might fulfill a prophecy that would place the very sun and moon within his grasp.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Tanith Lee
• Night's Daughter, Day's Desire - (1987)
• Children of the Night - (1987)
• The Prodigal - (1987)
• Dooniveh, the Moon - (1987)
• Black as a Rose - (1987)
• Game Players - (1987)
• The Daughter of the Magician - (1987)

In a novel-length tale of dark fantasy based on the fairy tale "Snow White," Arpazia and her unwanted daughter, Coira, conceived in violence during the sacking of her Arpazia's father's castle, are lured into the woods by the elder gods, who are seeking to restore their worship in a magical land in which a new religion threatens to transform life for everyone.

She woke from a sleep of countless years, reborn from the heart of a raging volcano. Her body was a masterpiece all men desired, her face a monstrosity that must go masked...

Warrior, witch, goddess and slave, she was doomed to travel through a world of barbaric splendour, helped and betrayed by her lovers, searching for escape from the taint of her forgotten race, and the malice of the demon that haunted her....

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...

Published in the UK as Shadowfire.

His veins ran with blood of Vazkor the warrior king and Uastis, the silver masked witch woman - the woman he had sworn to destroy....

Three bizarre, spellbinding novellas comprise the first volume of this series. "Stained with Crimson" is an erotic, horror-filled vampire tale. In "Malice in Saffron," a young girl exacts vengeance against men as a result of being brutally raped, but then tells of her eventual redemption and horrible self-sacrifice. "Empires of Azure" is a grim tale of death and sorcery. The unifying element is the setting: the magical French city of Paradys during the medieval era. Lee's superb imagination and her creative use of language to convey mood has generated three fantastic tales.

Table of Contents:

• Stained with Crimson - (1988) - novella
• Malice in Saffron - (1988) - novella
• Empires of Azure - (1988) - novella

A haunted house and a ghostly woman are the instruments that release an ancient curse upon the forgotten city of Paradys. As a savage, unholy beast prowls the city's streets, a young student seeks to uncover the secrets that will lead to his salvation. Lee infuses this dark tale with a dreamlike quality that hovers, like the world she has created (also seen in The Book of the Damned), on the border of reality.

The ambience of fin de siecle France imbues these eight gothic tales in the third volume in Lee's Secret Books of Paradys tetralogy, tracing the tortured lives once led by those buried in the crypts and cemeteries of the mythical (or forgotten) city of Paradys. "The Weasel Bride" twists a folktale about a man who marries an enchanted weasel and dies of her bite into an account of a young husband who kills his beloved bride on their wedding night and takes her dreadful secret to the gallows. The artist in "The Glass Dagger," who normally saves her emotion for her art, is consumed by jealous rage and turns to supernatural revenge when a jaded aristocrat tries an old stratagem to win her love. In "The Moon Is a Mask" a drudge who creates a world of beauty in her garret room steals to buy a mask that turns her into a vampire owl. The miasma of corruption and death, combined with vivid and at times elegiac writing will engross readers who fancy this dark shade of fantasy writing.

Table of Contents:

• The Weasel Bride - (1991) - shortstory
• The Nightmare's Tale - (1990) - novelette
• Beautiful Lady - (1991) - novelette
• Morcara's Room - (1991) - novelette
• The Marble Web - (1991) - novelette
• Lost in the World - (1991) - novelette
• The Glass Dagger - (1991) - novelette
• The Moon Is a Mask - (1991) - shortstory

The culmination of Lee's horror-fantasy tetralogy (The Book of the Dead, 1992, etc.). The previous entries are composed of related stories, but this one, though elliptically structured, forms a novel in its own right.

In the perpetually mist-shrouded, magical city of Paradise live the twins Felion and Smara, murderers who consider themselves the city's sole sane inhabitants. They hold the keys to a magic labyrinth of ice whose mercurial doorways give entry to an alternate city--scrubbed, bright, high-tech, laid-back Paradis.

Here, hard-drinking visionary painter Leocardia's grand house and fortune were willed to her by the same mysterious uncle who bequeathed the labyrinth to Felion and Smara. A third city, Paradys, lies in Paradis's stark Victorian past; here, beautiful, impressionable adolescent Hilde falls for a narcissistic actor, is raped by him, suffers a breakdown, and is consigned to an asylum where the depraved attendants routinely torment the inmates. Slowly, logically, inevitably, the lives and fates of Felion and Smara, Leocardia, and Hilde converge, with astonishing consequences.

Beautifully woven, with fascinating characters in a compelling narrative, brilliantly set forth in Lee's spare, firm, spiky prose. Sheer enchantment.

Lee sets her darkly terrifying new series amidst the timeless beauty of Venice, weaving intricate plots around the elements of water, fire, earth, and air. The first book immerses readers in the secret terror that lies beneath the ancient Venetian canals.

Starting with the premise of four novels based on the phases of alchemy and the four elements, Tanith Lee has created an evocative alternate Italy in her new series The Secret Books of Venus. In Saint Fire, the second volume in the series, Volpa is a strangely beautiful servant girl who glows with an inhuman inner fire. When her master, an abusive woodseller, is mysteriously incinerated, Volpa discovers her power of fire. Her gift is noticed by the Church leaders, who see her as a mighty weapon in their holy wars. This gripping fantasy of a mysteriously gifted Joan of Arc is stunning from beginning to end.

The third book in Tanith Lee's compelling series based on alchemy and the elements focuses on the element of earth. It is a haunting journey to a parallel version of sixteenth-century Venice, where a fierce territorial rivalry between two noble families-the della Scorpias and the Barbarons-unearths a supernatural force from beneath the placid surface of the canals and rotting understructure of the city.

The struggle between the two families for space on the Isle of the Dead, the overcrowded burial ground for generations of Venetian nobility, becomes more and more heated, and fourteen-year-old Meralda della Scorpia is forced to pay the ultimate price. But as the years pass on, parties complicit in her disappearance-from both houses-begin to suffer the consequences in a series of shocking deaths that could emanate from none other than a supernatural foe. As these bizarre events throw the city into a panic, a humble apprentice gravedigger is left to sort out the mysteries-an effort that will enable him to unearth the secrets of his own shadowy past.

Tanith Lee concludes her compelling Secret Books of Venus quartet with a haunting and suspenseful tale set in her brilliantly reimagined alternate Venice. Centuries into the future, the sunken city of Venus has been salvaged from beneath the sea and rebuilt there under a dome, where it is supported by a vast network of computers that regulate weather, noise, and the most precious undersea commodity of all-air.

It is here that a macabre experiment takes place. Conducted by geneticists at the university, it consists of the resurrection of two lost souls, both murdered in their times: Jula, a first-century gladiatrix, and Cloudio Del Nero, the eighteenth-century composer who met his fate in Lee's acclaimed first volume of the Venus series. An unexplained catastrophe occurs, claiming several lives. Was it merely an accident, computer failure, or has the experiment unleashed an airborne virus? Or is there an even more sinister danger afoot, a force from beyond that threatens the survival of Venus itself? To answer these questions, a traveler from the surface is forced to confront mysteries in his own past that have remained buried, and to reveal the connection that ties him to the unavenged spirits wreaking havoc on the doomed city.

Tempting the Gods collects some of Tanith Lee's fiction from the late 80s to the present, from a variety of venues (Asimovs', Weird Tales, and Realms of Fantasy). They range in tone from the dark ("Cain") and Arthurian Legend ("The Kingdoms of the Air"), to Arabian Nights adventure ("These Beasts") and the just plain weird ("Tiger I"). All stories feature Lee's carefully crafted language, tight plotting, vivid imagination, and matchless evocation of atmosphere. Not all tales are dark - there's even some humor, such as the new to this collection "God and the Pig." Like Bradbury and Vance, Lee is a unique stylist. This collection - the first part of a two part series - is a perfect introduction to her work, some of the best writing in the weird fiction category.

Volume two of the magical short story collection by Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee, author of The Silver Metal Lover and The Birthgrave. "Gothic poetess, comic young-adult author, robust adventure-fantasy novelist: Tanith Lee has more writing personas than Sybil. But in her short fiction, all these aspects come gloriously together. Such stories as 'Antonius Bequeathed' or 'The Persecution Machine,' with their death-defying mixture of prose poetry, genre trope reversals and ominous wit, could be written by no one else." - WEIRD TALES magazine Stories include: "The Woman in Scarlet," "One For Sorrow," "Unlocking the Golden Cage," "Antonius Bequeathed," "Doll Skulls," "Queens in Crimson," "Flower Water," "The Persecution Machine," "All the Birds of Hell," "Vermilia."

Table of Content

• The Woman in Scarlet - (2000) - shortstory
• Zelle's Thursday - (1989) - shortstory
• Unlocking the Golden Cage - (1999) - shortstory
• The Eye in the Heart - (2000) - shortstory
• Vermilia - (1999) - shortstory
• Flower Water - (1998) - shortstory
• Doll Skulls - (1996) - novelette
• Queens in Crimson - shortfiction
• All the Birds of Hell - (1998) - novelette
• The Persecution Machine - (1994) - shortstory
• Antonius Bequeathed - (1993) - shortstory
• One for Sorrow - (1994) - novelette

Nobody knew where it had come from, or what it wanted. Not even Jaive, the sorceress, could fathom the mystery of the fabled beast. But Tanaquil, Jaive's completely unmagical daughter, understood it at once. She knew why the unicorn was there: It had come for her. It needed her. Tanaquil was amazed because she was the girl with no talent for magic. She could only fiddle with broken bits of machinery and make them work again. What could she do for a unicorn?

Tanaquil, a young mender, and her familiar come face to face with her half-sister, Lizra, who forces Tanaquil to make a perilous choice between siding with Lizra in her quest for conquest or risking her terrible anger.

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.

A novel of an unknown planet and of the conflict of empires and peoples on that world. It is the 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.

The lowland girl seemed to contain fire. Her hair stirred, flickered, gushed upward, blowing flame in a wind that did now blow.

A tower of light shot up the sky, beginning where the girl stood. For half a second there was only light, then it took form.

The form it took was Anackire.

She towered, she soared. Her flesh was a white mountain. Her snake's tail a river of fire in spate. Her golden head touched the apex of the sky, and there the serpents of her hair snapped like lightnings. Her eyes were twin suns. The eight arms, outheld as the two arms of the girl had been, rested weightlessly on the air, the long fingers subtly moving...

The girl standing before the well, unblasted by the entity she had released, seemed only quiescent. At last one could see that her face, as it had always been, was the face of Anackire...

THE 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.