Best Selling Books by Jo Walton

Winner of the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel Winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel Startling, unusual, and yet irresistibly readable, Jo Walton''s Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment. Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead. Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off... Combining elements of autobiography with flights of imagination in the manner of novels like Jonathan Lethem''s The Fortress of Solitude, this is potentially a breakout book for an author whose genius has already been hailed by peers like Kelly Link, Sarah Weinman, and Ursula K. Le Guin. One of School Library Journal''s Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011 One of io9''s best Science Fiction & Fantasy books of the year 2011 At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Fantasy-roman.

As an elderly woman in 2015, Patricia Cowan reflects on both her lives, one as Pat and the other as Tricia, as the decisions she made in her life provide two drastically different experiences

“A remarkable guided tour through the field—a kind of nonfiction companion to Among Others. It’s very good. It’s great.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing As any reader of Jo Walton’s Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field’s most ambitious series. Among Walton’s many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by “mainstream”; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field’s many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. “For readers unschooled in the history of SF/F, this book is a treasure trove.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award–winning author delivers a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence. Young Girolamo’s life is a series of miracles. It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. When Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and—miraculously—convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. Now, whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. Despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose . . . and running Florence in all but name. And that’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling time. And this will be only the first of his many lives.

A stunning "what-if" in the manner of "Fatherland" and "The Plot Against ""America"

It''s 1960, and the Axis powers dominate the world. Life goes on, because, as we see in "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction," history is driven both by big events and by small temptations... Following the appearance of her first two novels, The King''s Peace and The King''s Name, Jo Walton won the 2002 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Two years later she won the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw. Her Small Change trilogy, comprising Farthing, Ha''penny, and Half A Crown, is set in a world in which Britain struck an early truce with Hitler in 1941; "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction" is set in the America of that world. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Here is a small part of my soul I pulled out and shaped like this It is still bleeding, but only a little It won''t mess your hands much, And you can wash them after. For years Hugo and Nebula award winning writer Jo Walton has been writing poems and posting them online, first on usenet, then on livejournal, more recently on Patreon. Some have been collected in chapbooks and in Starlings, but most of them have just stayed online. Here at last is a comprehensive collection of her poems from 1996-2020 with table of contents and an index of first lines, and arranged in thematic categories, Love Pain and Death, New Myths For Old Gold, Red As Blood, By Their Spaceships Ye Shall Know Them, Shakespeare, The News, The Turning Year, and Whimsy. Some of the poems are fantastical, others are about everyday life, or politics. If there''s one thing that links Walton''s very different work it''s the quality of "where did that come from?" Here we have a poem about lions becoming extinct after being persecuted by martyrs, one about Henry V''s conquest of Constantinople, alongside one about a skydiver friend who died and fell up into the sky. These poems, written over decades, are quirky, unpredictable, and have excellent scansion.

With "understated prose and deft characterizations" a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author''s imagines post-WWII England as a fascist regime ( Publishers Weekly). In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and banquets of Britain''s upper class never faltered, while British ships ferried "undesirables" across the Channel to board the cattle cars headed east. Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch, Britain''s distinctly British secret police. It''s his job to warn the Prime Minister of treason, to arrest plotters, and to discover Jews. The midnight knock of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in the realm. Now, in 1960, a global peace conference is convening in London, where Britain, Germany, and Japan will oversee the final partition of the world. Hitler is once again on British soil. So is the long exiled Duke of Windsor—and the rising gangs of "British Power" streetfighters, who consider the Government "soft," may be the former king''s bid to stage a coup d''état. Amidst all this, two of the most unlikely persons in the realm will join forces to oppose the fascists: a debutante whose greatest worry until now has been where to find the right string of pearls, and the Watch Commander himself.

Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton. He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years. But Sylvia won''t live forever, any more than any human does. And he''s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he. Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he''s got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

After being moved to planet Plato by Zeus, the Cities are prospering and flourishing, until Pytheas dies as a human and returns as the god Apollo.

The goddess Athene attempts to create a utopia with robots and time travelers in this science fiction fantasy by a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author. "Walton''s no-nonsense prose and dialogue are the kind of thing I can read anywhere, in any situation, and fall into a world of intelligent people speaking to each other intelligently in interesting ways. . . . Brilliant, compelling, and frankly unputdownable." —NPR Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future—all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past. The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer''s daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D., is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome—and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her. Meanwhile, Apollo—stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does—has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human. Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives—the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself—to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell . . . "A remarkable novel of ideas. . . . Superb." — Booklist (Starred Review) "A brilliant and haunting meditation on utopia, power, and consent—with deeply engaging characters and consummately clever world-building. Jo Walton has given us another winner." —Susan Palwick

Following Farthing, another thriller of resistance in a world darkened by triumphant Fascism

From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: Philosopher Kings, a tale of gods and humans, and the surprising things they have to learn from one another. Twenty years have elapsed since the events of The Just City. The City, founded by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, organized on the principles espoused in Plato''s Republic and populated by people from all eras of human history, has now split into five cities, and low-level armed conflict between them is not unheard-of. The god Apollo, living (by his own choice) a human life as "Pythias" in the City, his true identity known only to a few, is now married and the father of several children. But a tragic loss causes him to become consumed with the desire for revenge. Being Apollo, he goes handling it in a seemingly rational and systematic way, but it''s evident, particularly to his precocious daughter Arete, that he is unhinged with grief. Along with Arete and several of his sons, plus a boatload of other volunteers--including the now fantastically aged Marsilio Ficino, the great humanist of Renaissance Florence--Pythias/Apollo goes sailing into the mysterious Eastern Mediterranean of pre-antiquity to see what they can find—possibly the man who may have caused his great grief, possibly communities of the earliest people to call themselves "Greek." What Apollo, his daughter, and the rest of the expedition will discover...will change everything. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

What we do for one another is a mystery. A Tor.com original. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In the summer of 2019, novelist Jo Walton went on a trip around France and Northern Italy visiting the homes of Voltaire, Diderot, Petrarch, and Pico della Mirandola. This is the account of where and why she went, what she ate, thought, and experienced on the way. This novella-length account was composed on the equivalent days of 2020.

The warrior Sulien ap Gwien and her lord King Urdo have finally united the land of Tir Tanagiri into a kingdom ruled by justice under a single code of law. But where many see a hopeful future for the land, others believe they sense the seeds of a new tyranny. Soon Tir Tanagiri faces the blight of civil war, and Sulien ap Gwien must take up arms against former comrades and loved ones, fighting harder and harder to hold on to Urdo''s shining dream. Continuing the epic begun in The King''s Peace, this new novel brings the story of Sulien ap Gwien to a rousing and moving conclusion. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The wrath of a goddess tests alliances between kingdoms and tears apart the lives of four friends in this epic fantasy. Jo Walton’s first two novels, The King''s Peace and The King''s Name, earned her widespread praise and moved her to the front rank of contemporary fantasists. Now she returns with a powerful epic set in the same world . . . The Prize in the Game is the tale of the intertwined fates of four friends, destined for kingship but riven by rivalry and war. Gods stalk the island of Tir Isarnagiri, laying subtle and inescapable dooms upon the feuding kingdoms there. And to those gods, the cares of men and women are less than nothing—but still men and women strive to defy their fates and build destinies of their own. When a friendly competition leads to the death of a beloved horse and incurs the wrath of the Horse Goddess, the stage is set for a deadly game of politics, love, and betrayal. And as the goddess’s curse chases them down the years, Conal, Emer, Darag, and Ferdia will find that ties of friendship, and even love, may not be enough to prevent their respective countries from attacking each other in a war that will devastate the island. The Prize in the Game takes us to a shining era of dark powers, legendary heroes, and passionate loves—all of them ruled by the hand of Fate. “Walton sure-handedly evokes a primitive realm where the Otherworld seamlessly impinges upon reality, bringing sounds, smells, sorrow, hatred and burning love to life as powerfully as the thrust of a barbed spear. She also captures the terrible beauty of a warrior race in an outworn time, struggling, in Yeats’s phrase, to come clear of the eternal nets of wrong and right.” —Publishers Weekly

Sulian ap Gwien was only 17 when the Jarnish raiders came. Had she been armed, she could have defeated them. It took six to subdue her--and she will never forgive them. Thus begins the tale of a woman who rises to become the strong right hand to the great king who will reunite his people. (August)

Engaged, passionate, and consistently entertaining, An Informal History of the Hugos is a book about the renowned science fiction award for the many who enjoyed Jo Walton''s previous collection of writing from Tor.com, the Locus Award–winning What Makes This Book So Great. The Hugo Awards, named after pioneer science-fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, and voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society, have been presented since 1953. They are widely considered the most prestigious awards in science fiction. Between 2010 and 2013, Jo Walton wrote a series of posts for Tor.com, surveying the Hugo finalists and winners from the award''s inception up to the year 2000. Her contention was that each year''s full set of finalists generally tells a meaningful story about the state of science fiction at that time. Walton''s cheerfully opinionated and vastly well-informed posts provoked valuable conversation among the field''s historians. Now these posts, lightly revised, have been gathered into this book, along with a small selection of the comments posted by SF luminaries such as Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, and David G. Hartwell. "A remarkable guided tour through the field—a kind of nonfiction companion to Among Others. It''s very good. It''s great." —New York Times–bestselling author Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing on What Makes This Book So Great

Tor.com''s science fiction and fantasy flash fiction collection originally published in 2017 inspired by the now-iconic statement, now available in e-book format. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted. Three short lines, fired over social media in response to questions of why Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced on the floor of the United States Senate, for daring to read aloud the words of Coretta Scott King. As this message was transmitted across the globe, it has become a galvanizing cry for people of all genders in recognition of the struggles that women have faced throughout history. Three short lines, which read as if they are the opening passage to an epic and ageless tale. We have assembled this flash fiction collection featuring several of the best writers in SF/F today, including Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, Maria Dahvana Headley, Jo Walton, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherynne M. Valente, Brooke Bolander, Alyssa Wong, Kameron Hurley, Nisi Shawl and Carrie Vaughn. Together these authors share unique visions of women inventing, playing, loving, surviving, and – of course – dreaming of themselves beyond their circumstances. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lifelode is the Mythopoeic Award Winning novel from Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning author Jo Walton. It was published in hardcover in 2009 by NESFA Press and is now available for the first time as an ebook. At its heart, Lifelode is the story of a comfortable manor house family. The four adults of the household are happily polygamous, each fulfilling their ‘lifelode’ or life’s purpose: Ferrand is the lord of the manor, his sweetmate Taveth runs the household, his wife Chayra makes ceramics, and Taveth’s husband Ranal works the farm. Their children are a joyful bunch, running around in the sunshine days of the harvest and wondering what their own lifelodes will be. Their lives changed with the arrival of two visitors to Applekirk: Jankin the scholar and Hanethe, Ferrand’s great grandmother and the former lord of the manor, who has been living for many generations in the East, a place where the gods walk and yeya (magic) is so powerful that those who wield it are not quite human.

History is a thing we make—in more senses than one. And from more directions. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Finalist for 2017 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature For the first time, Jo Walton’s critically acclaimed, genre-defying trilogy Thessaly—The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, and Necessity—is available in softcover, in a single-volume trade paperback omnibus The goddess Athena thought she was creating a utopia. Populate the island of Thera with extraordinary men, women, and children from throughout history, and watch as the mortals forge a harmonious society based on the tenets of Plato’s Republic. Meanwhile, following his famous spurning by a nymph, Athena''s ever-curious brother Apollo has decided to live a mortal human life on the island, in an effort to gain a better understanding of humanity. But as both Athena and Apollo soon discover, even the Just City is susceptible to the iron law that nothing ever happens as planned. And there are sins in Paradise, mortal and divine, far graver than the everyday ones. In an epic encompassing sandy Mediterranean shores and the farthest reaches of the galaxy, Victorian England and Renaissance Italy, gods and humans argue, fight, love, and most of all, learn from one another, in critically-acclaimed author Jo Walton''s unique exploration of the human condition,Thessaly. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Starlings isn’t really a short-story collection. It’s something better: a written showreel, illustrating yet again that [Walton’s] imagination stretches to the stars (or the starlings), and that she’s endlessly inventive in finding new methods to express it.”—NPR Books An ancient coin cyber-spies on lovers and thieves. The magic mirror sees all but can do nothing. A cloned savior solves a fanatically-inspired murder. Three Irish siblings thieve treasures with bad poetry and the aid of the Queen of Cats. With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic—rising from the every day into the universe itself.

Morwenna Phelps, qui préfère qu''on l''appelle Mori, est placée par son père dans l''école privée d''Arlinghurst, où elle se remet du terrible accident qui l''a laissée handicapée et l''a privée à jamais de sa sœur jumelle, Morganna. Là, Mori pourrait dépérir, mais elle découvre le pouvoir des livres de science-fiction. Delany, Zelazny, Le Guin et Silverberg peuplent ses journées, la passionnent. Un jour, elle reçoit une photo où sa silhouette a été brûlée... Que peut faire une adolescente de seize ans quand son pire ennemi, potentiellement mortel, est sa propre mère ? Elle peut chercher dans les livres le courage de combattre. Ode à la différence, journal intime d''une adolescente qui parle aux fées, Morwenna est aussi une plongée inquiétante dans le folklore gallois. Ce roman touchant et bouleversant a été récompensé par les plus grands prix littéraires du genre : le prix Hugo, le prix Nebula et le British Fantasy Award.

Un fin de semana del verano de 1949 el «círculo de Farthing», un grupo bien relacionado de la flor y nata de las familias inglesas, disfruta de unos días en el campo. Lucy es la hija menor de una de esas familias. Sus padres fueron destacados personajes dentro del grupo que derrocó a Churchill y negoció la paz con Hitler ocho años antes. Lucy está felizmente casada con un judío londinense, a pesar de la manifiesta desaprobación de sus padres; por eso fue muy sorprendente que les invitaran a ella y a su esposo, David, a pasar esos días en el campo. Y resulta mucho más sorprendente cuando, la primera noche, un importante político del círculo de Farthing resulta asesinado de forma espantosa, con numerosos signos que apuntan a una muerte ritual.

Die fünfzehnjährige Morwenna ist auf der Flucht vor einer Mutter, die sich der finsteren Magie verschrieben hat, vor der staatlichen Fürsorge und vor der Erinnerung an den Tod ihrer Zwillingsschwester. Am schlimmsten trifft sie jedoch, dass sie ihre Heimat verlassen muss, das märchenhafte Wales, und damit ihre einzigen Freunde, die Feen und Geister, die dort in den Wäldern zu Hause sind. Auch ihr Vater, den sie nie gekannt hat, möchte sie nicht bei sich aufnehmen und schickt sie auf ein Mädcheninternat, wo sie mit der Verständnislosigkeit der Lehrer und dem maßlosen Ehrgeiz der anderen Schülerinnen fertig werden muss. Verzweifelt greift sie zu der Magie, die sie seit ihrer Kindheit begleitet, einer Magie, die niemand außer ihr sehen kann. Und zu ihren Büchern. In Science-Fiction- und Fantasy-Romanen findet sie mehr als nur flüchtigen Trost: Sie öffnen Tore zu anderen Welten, und das nicht nur im übertragenen Sinne. Als ihre Mutter zu einem neuerlichen Schlag ausholt, sind es Bücher, in die Morwenna ihre ganze Hoffnung setzt ... Ausgezeichnet mit dem Hugo Award als bester Roman des Jahres Nebula Award als bester Roman des Jahres British Fantasy Award als bester Roman des Jahres Kurd Laßwitz Preis als bester Roman des jahres

This story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood is at once a diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

En 1949, ocho años después de que el círculo de Farthing negociara la «Paz con Honor» entre Gran Bretaña y la Alemania nazi, Inglaterra ha completado su deriva hacia una dictadura fascista. Cuando el infame Mark Normanby apro-vecha un asesinato político para organizar su elección como primer ministro, las últimas esperanzas para la democracia parecen agotarse. Entonces explota una bomba en un área residencial de Londres. El inspector Carmichael, de Scotland Yard, un hombre brillante aunque sometido a presiones políticas, se encarga de llevar el caso. Lo que averigua lo lleva hasta una conspiración por parte de nobles y comunistas, de leales adeptos al rey y a la patria y de implacables pistoleros del ira, para asesinar a Normanby y a su nuevo aliado, Adolf Hitler.

Jo Walton (born December 1, 1964) is a Welsh fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004.

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