Best Selling Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The novel that truly begins the bestselling Avalon saga...

On Darkover, it is the era of the Hundred Kingdoms - a time of nearly continuous war and bloody disputes between minor kings who seek to increase their power by usurping their neighbours'' domains. A time when Towers are conscripted to produce terrifying laran weapons - weapons which kill from afar, poisoning the very land itself for decades to come. In this dark time, there seems no limit to the violence men are willing to wage against their adversaries in the name of power. But in this terrifying time of greed and imperialism, two powerful men have devoted their lives to changing their world and eliminating these terrible weapons. For years King Carolin of Hastur and his close friend, Varzil Ridenow have dreamed of a world without war. Now they petition the domains of Darkover to adopt a decree that they call the Compact. Their Compact, a law based on honour, will ban all distance weapons, thus forcing one who seeks to kill another to fight hand to hand and face equal risk. But while Varzil and Carolin continue their difficult campaign to bring peace to Darkover, another man hides in the alleys of Thendara, biding his time, and plotting the destruction of these two heroic men. For Eduin Delucido, the renegade laranzu who disappeared during the battle which nearly destroyed Hestral Tower, still lives . . . and lives only to see the demise of Carolin Hastur and his entire clan!

Xanadu. Not the Xanadu of Coleridge''s poem, but-to the half-forgotten space drifter who discovered the place thirty years ago-a reasonable facsimile. It was a cloistered nun of a city, hidden behind a wide skirt of the most impassable mountains on Mars. And the city was more impassable than the mountains. No human being had ever entered it-yet. They''d tried. Two expeditions, twelve years apart, had vanished without trace, without explanation other than the dusty notebook Andrew had unearthed, today, from the rotted shreds of a skeleton''s clothing.

Jeff Kerwin had spent his early years in the Spacemen''s Orphanage on Darkover. Yet he''d never felt that he belonged there, for he was haunted by dreams of the world surrounding the Terran city. After being shipped back to Earth, Jeff finally returns to the planet of the bloody sun, where he hopes to unlock the mystery of his heritage.

Morgaine, gifted with the Sight and fated with her brother-lover''s doom, recounts the glorious tragedy of Camelot''s brief flowering - not as a tale of knightly deeds, but as a woman''s rounded view of society in the crucible of change.

Leonie Hastur, headstrong and lovely daughter of the Hastur Clan, most powerful of all the telepathic families who rule Darkover, is being escorted by her twin brother Lorill to Dalreuth Tower for training in the use of her psychic powers. Although this is the even she has long dreamed of - for her laran is so strong that she has been able to use it without benefit of training or the need of a matrix crystal - and she yearns for the power which will come to her if she succeeds in becoming a keeper, she is deeply disturbed. For she is plagued by a terrifying premonition that haunts her days and disrupts her nights, the inescapable feeling that something is about to happen - something monumental and dangerous which will descend upon her world and change it utterly. And all she knows for certain is that this something will be coming from one of Darkover''s four moons...

Marion Zimmer Bradley''s legendary saga of Avalon''s extraordinary women continues with a tale of fiery visions, a lost king, and a forthcoming destiny... A boy raised in secret after traitors kill his parents will return to Avalon-and when he does, he''ll be faced with a formidable task: to prove his worth as a son of the kings and priestesses of his land and lead his followers to victory, wielding the newly-forged sword Excalibur.

Although Darkover was a world inhabited by humans as well as semi-humans, it was primarily forbidden ground to the Terran traders. Most of the planet''s wild terrain was unexplored, and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive. But for Andrew Carr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him -- and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him. Until the planet''s magic asserted itself -- and his destiny began to unfold.

Former spy Colin MacLaren, who fought black magic in World War II, takes on black magic in present-day America. By the author of Gravelight.

The Colors of Space - Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Colors of Space is a 1963 science fiction novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. - Can Bart Steele devise a plan to steal the secret of faster-than-light space travel from the Lhari, reptilian aliens who ruthlessly control warpdrive technology?

Haunted by mysterious images of hooded figures, Magdalen Lorne, chief Terran operative on Darkover, pursues a quest not only to the frozen ends of the physical world but also to the perilous limits of the spiritual world. And there she is tested by the evil sorcery of the Dark Sisterhood.

Three fan-favorite authors present “a classic fantasy quest involving mysterious wizards, rites of passage, and the salvation of a kingdom” (Library Journal). Peace has long reigned in Ruwenda thanks to the magical protection of the Archimage Binah. The realm’s devoted guardian is aging, however, and her magic is weakening. When the kingdom’s triplet princesses were still infants, Binah gave each of them the mystical power of the Black Trillium. But the unthinkable occurs too soon, and Ruwenda is overrun by the ravaging armies of neighboring Labornok before the sisters, Haramis, Kadiya, and Anigel, have time to learn how to use their great gift. Forced to flee, the young princesses must follow their separate destinies through a dangerous and unfamiliar world of Oddlings and enemies—for only the combined power of three magical talismans can help them defeat the malevolent sorcerer who has brought chaos and death to their once-idyllic home. But it will take new kinds of strength and wisdom to confront the great evil that has descended on the World of the Three Moons. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May, and Andre Norton, three of the most honored names in fantasy fiction, have joined forces to create an extraordinary world and culture in the first book of the remarkable Saga of the Trillium, a breathtaking tale of duty, peril, love, and magic.

By the time I got myself all the way awake I thought I was alone. I was lying on a leather couch in a bare white room with huge windows, alternate glass-brick and clear glass. Beyond the clear windows was a view of snow-peaked mountains which turned to pale shadows in the glass-brick. Habit and memory fitted names to all these; the bare office, the orange flare of the great sun, the names of the dimming mountains. But beyond a polished glass desk, a man sat watching me. And I had never seen the man before. He was chubby, and not young, and had ginger-colored eyebrows and a fringe of ginger-colored hair around the edges of a forehead which was otherwise quite pink and bald. He was wearing a white uniform coat, and the intertwined caduceus on the pocket and on the sleeve proclaimed him a member of the Medical Service attached to the Civilian HQ of the Terran Trade City. I didn''t stop to make all these evaluations consciously, of course. They were just part of my world when I woke up and found it taking shape around me. The familiar mountains, the familiar sun, the strange man. But he spoke to me in a friendly way, as if it were an ordinary thing to find a perfect stranger sprawled out taking a siesta in here. "Could I trouble you to tell me your name?"

The Door Through Space is a 1961 science fiction novel by American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley. An expansion of Bradley''s story "Bird of Prey", which first appeared in the May, 1957 issue of the magazine Venture, it is her first novel, and was published by Ace Books, bound tête-bêche with Rendezvous on a Lost World by A. Bertram Chandler.

Eilan, daughter of the Druids, is destined to serve as a virgin priestess in the Forest House of Avalon; Gaius, son of a Roman father and British mother, serves with the legions. Trapped between a love that can never be permitted ad duty to their irreconcilable cultures, their hearts and minds are in turmoil as Rome and the tribes clash in the bitter struggle for Britain. Yet it is foretold by High Priestess Caillean that from their tragic union of Eagle and Dragon will come one day a defender of the land... The Forests of Avalon is first in the bestselling Avalon series, followed by Lady of Avalon and The Mists of Avalon.

The heritage of Hastur, longest and most intricate of the Darkover books, is a brilliant epic of the pivotal event in the strange love-hate relationship between the Terran worlds and the semi-alien offspring of forgotten peoples. This is the novel of the Hastur tradition and of the showdown between those who would bargain away their world for the glories of star-borne science and those who would preserve the special "matrix" power that was at once the prize and the burden of ruddy-sunned Darkover.

She was Margaret Alton, the daughter of Lew Alton, the Darkovan representative to the Terran Imperial Senate, but she remembered almost nothing about the planet of her birth, or her early and tumultuous childhood. What fleeting memories disturbed her sleep were fragments of terror - a strange silver man and a screaming woman with hair that circled her head like a ring of fire. Since leaving Darkover as a child, Margaret had lived her life on Thetis. Lew and her stepmother, Diotima, were gone much of the year, working in the Senate, struggling to keep Darkover safe from the all-consuming imperialism of the Terran Federation. She hardly knew her father, a brooding man who, when he returned to Thetis, was prone to long bouts of drinking. At these times, his normally morose and uncommunicative demeanor would take on an even darker hue ... times when he seemed to look at Margaret and see someone else - someone he did not want to remember. As soon as Margaret was of age, she fled her stormy home and took refuge on University. Here Margaret, strangely uncomfortable around her peers, found solace in the isolation of study. She excelled in music and was granted the position of assistant to her mentor, renowned musicologist Dr. Ivor Davidson. This prestigious job took her to many worlds, and when she and Professor Davidson were assigned to collect folk songs on Darkover, Margaret was curious and pleased. But once on Darkover, Margaret''s innocent excitement quickly waned. The world of her birth evoked long-buried memories, painful and terrifying, and she soon found herself falling deeper and deeper into a waking dream that threatened to become a nightmare. Margaret began to hear voices in her head- one voice in particular which seemed to confront her at every turn - and she wondered if she were losing her mind.

The most dangerous matrix on all Darkover was the legendary Sharra. Embodied in the image of a chained woman, wreathed in flames, it was the last remaining weapon of the Ages of Chaos that had almost destroyed civilization on the planet of the Bloody Sun. The Sharra had been exiled off-planet among the far stars of the Terran Empire in the custody of Lew Alton ... until he found himself called back to his homeworld to contest his rights. But once the Sharra was back, the flaming image spread far and wide---and set in motion events that were to change the land, the domains, and the future of Darkover forever.

A classic novel in the bestselling Darkover series. For three quarters of a century, Darkover has resisted the Terran Empire''s efforts in colonization and industrialization. But the leader of Planetary Investments Unlimited (known as Worldwreckers, Inc.) has decided to take on this assignment herself . . . for long ago, she had called Darkover home.

Torn between love and duty, a reluctant young acolyte will be called on to magically save her imperiled world in this enthralling chapter of the Saga of the Trillium Of the three royal siblings who made up the Petals of the Living Trillium, only Lady Haramis survives nine hundred years after the events that nearly devastated their realm. But the Archimage is old and ill, and a successor must be found if Ruwenda is to remain safe and protected. In Princess Mikayla, Haramis recognizes the ideal candidate. However, the impulsive teenager must be carefully schooled in the magic arts—and the headstrong youth isn’t certain she even wants the responsibility, especially if it means abandoning her one true love. But time is running out—for Haramis and for the kingdom. And with disaster looming, the fate of Mikayla’s endangered homeland may soon fall heavily on the shoulders of a young, only half-trained rebel, ready or not. Revisiting the magnificent world she created with fellow fantasy luminaries Julian May and Andre Norton in Black Trillium, the remarkable Marion Zimmer Bradley joins coauthor Elisabeth Waters to gaze into the far future of the World of the Three Moons. Lady of the Trillium is an enthralling, unforgettable tale of destiny, duty, magic, love, and the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between old and young.

Of all the worlds of the Galaxy, only the Matriarchy of Isis/Cinderella has returned to an ancient social order. It is on Isis that women rule, their control total and unbending. On Isis men are regarded as dangerous animals or, at best, as sexual playthings. And on Isis the great enigma of the known universe, the Builder Ruins - last remnant of an unknown, ancient culture. Within those strange Ruins, something survives - something which speaks to the women of Isis and to no one else.

A Pilgrim Adept of the Blue Star, Lythande is pledged to use her powers as a sorceress, musician, and warrior to battle the forces of Chaos

Originally published in Amazing Stories in December 1958, The Planet Savers was the very first Darkover novel to see print. It was here that readers first encountered the now legendary world of Cottman IV, at a time when the Terrans were desperately seeking a cure for a disease of epidemic proportions that threatened the lives of Darkovans and Terrans alike.The Planet Savers introduced many readers to the wondrous world of the red sun, and it remains today a powerful evocation of the magic and mystery of Darkover.