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Mary Shelley, a young banker's son, and William, an excessively tall man with a "lividly hued visage, watery eyes, and blackened lips within a straggling beard," pit their wits and derring-do against Lord Byron, master of steampunk technology, and his thuggish minions.

After WisCon 20, Sylvia Kelso engaged Lois McMaster Bujold in a rich, snappy correspondence about Bujold's Vorkosigan novels.

• Letterspace: In the Chinks Between Published Fiction and Published Criticism - (1999) - essay by Lois McMaster Bujold and Sylvia Kelso
• Third Person Peculiar: Reading Between Academic and SF-Community Positions in (Feminist) Sf - essay by Sylvia Kelso
• Tales of Earth: Terraforming in Recent Women's Sf - essay by Sylvia Kelso
• Loud Achievements: Lois McMaster Bujold's Science Fiction Through 1997 - essay by Sylvia Kelso

A city. A mystery. An impossible love.

Why would the Head of a great ruling House retrieve a robbed, battered victim left for dead in the streets of the legendary city of Amberlight?

Why would the oracle that guides all House-heads tell her, It matters, if he dies?

What would an outlander stripped of all memory know of cabal and coalition along the River, where Amberlight holds the monopoly of power and wealth?

What threat might he reveal to Amberlight's one, unique possession: the motherlodes of the qherrique; the pearl-rock that gives the River's rulers their most powerful tool?

What could the Head of a great House feel for a nameless stranger, that would make her risk her House and city for his sake?

Is it honor or betrayal that brings war, siege, and the ruin of their every hope?

The answers lie beyond tangles of intrigue and insurrection and brutal warfare, when in the final upheaval they both begin to understand the more-than-human mystery that first brought them together in the streets of Amberlight.

Fighting doubt and convention, beset with great challenge and facing profound change, Tellurith leads her displaced House to a new beginning and a different life in Iskarda - a life that includes men and women as equals.

But the traditionalist Iskardans are outraged by Tellurith's policies and appalled by her love for two husbands: Alkhes - the rough, dark Outlander who brought Amberlight its doom - and golden Sarth, epitome of the urbane men of the Amberlight Towers.

To achieve Tellurith's dream, both must re-shape their lives. To preserve the dream, all three must journey to Dhasdein's imperial capital of Riversend and face deadly menace and perilous machination.

After their shattering departure from Amberlight, Telluir House has begun to rebuild in the mountain village of Iskarda - but even there, River politics remain a threat.

When Tellurith and her consort receive the precious yet harrowing gift of a possible new form of the qherrique, only one solution offers protection for Iskarda and the qherrique both: leave Iskarda. Find the River's Source. The qherrique itself chooses Tellurith a company, of husbands, lovers, old friends and new, and their passage upRiver is accompanied by upheavals and catastrophe wherever they pass.

Nor are things quieter downRiver, or in Iskarda itself. Before she can return, everything Tellurith has worked for threatens to crumble, as war flares along the River, among the fall and liberation of states, including Amberlight. It takes revelation, sacrifice, great loss, and an impossible hope's fulfillment, to bring Tellurith and her company safely home from the Source, to a River that will never be the same again.

What does the dragon know?

The kingdom of Everran is dying, razed by a dragon that came out of nowhere to burn its oil groves and devastate its vineyards and kill its folk. Everran was safe, prosperous, and contented, with peaceful lords, a strong king, and beautiful queen. What has it ever done to earn a curse? But legend says a dragon's coming always has a cause. If no enemy has bespelled the country, is there something wrong in Everran itself? Despite its prosperity and its peace and its royal couple who have not yet had a child?

Soldiers cannot stop the dragon. There is no help in Everran's neighbors, and none in legend or history. Why has the dragon come? What does the dragon know? Answering its riddle will explain the ruin of a kingdom - and turn its ruler into something less than human but very much more than a man.

The fountain plays. The empress dreams. The mighty realm of Assharral shelters eight provinces under her timeless rule. Asharral is peaceful, wealthy and secure. But nobody sings. And only one vagabond wizard wonders why.

The all-powerful empress Moriana little expects she sows the seed for revolution in dictating captain of the guard, Alkir, bring her wizard Beryx. He proves an easy-to-underestimate wizard with his scarred face and crippled arm, but while she will claim first advantage with his imprisonment, Beryx's devotion to the "good magic" of Math sparks hope for those over whom Morianna rules and a viable threat to the evil magic of Ammanth that is the source of her power.

The sequel to Everran's Bane, the first Chronicle of Rihannar.

Introducing the princess and the mage.

He doesn't do well with people. She isn't so good with tact. But to survive an imperial invasion the wild, beautiful, fragile desert of Hethria will need them both.

She knows about tactics. He understands reality. They both love Hethria. But what if, to save something you love, you have to change yourself?

Some wars you just can't win alone.

The Red Country is the third book in the Chronicles of Rihannar, successor to Everrran's Bane and The Moving Water, praised by reviewers for the depth of their world-building and attractive characters. In this vividly realised high fantasy, love and magic are tested to the utmost in the struggle for a land whose spell, once experienced, is impossible to escape.

The one thing worse than being made a wizard is to be born a wizard.

The mage's Arts came to Phaz at birth. His father Zam is the wizard guardian of the great desert Hethria. His mother Sellithar was a Crown Princess. The rulers of mighty Assharral want him to inherit their empire. What choices does he have left? Especially with a family who fear that evil is his natural bent?

He could always run. But just to help things along, Phaz has an Art of his own that offers glimpses of the future. Run or stay, it's not where you'd want to end up.

The Seagull is story about voyages in the world and in the heart.