New Releases by Marion Zimmer Bradley

After spending her youth in the Terran Empire, Margaret Alton returns to Darkover, the planet of her birth. There she discovers she has the Alton Gift--forced rapport and compulsion--one of the strongest and most dangerous of the inherited Laran gifts of the telepathic Comyn--the ruling families of Darkover. And even as she struggles to control her newfound powers, Margaret finds herself falling in love with the Regent to the royal Elhalyn Domain, a man she has been forbidden to marry, for their alliance would irrevocably alter the power balance of their planet!

A woman seeking solace after losing her child and a divorcee become unlikely heroes when they help the people of the magical kingdom of Glenraven overthrow an evil dictator.

And it will be sated by no less than the souls of all men, the Heart of a Goddess ... and the blood of a Princess.

A romantic fantasy set in a futuristic society divided by two cultures, one male dominated and one egalitarian, where the roles of male and female, love and marriage and justice and injustice are brought sharply into focus. From the author of CASTLE TERROR.

"... While her writing is of course essentially science fiction, it could as easily be considered fantasy. Her themes vary, but she is frequently concerned with social issues in which societies are in conflict and where there are no simple solutions. She is also often concerned with the implications of sex roles and sex role stereotyping"--Book jacket.

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.

"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 Age 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 spraed far and wide--and set in motion events that were to change the land, the domains, and the future of Darkover forever."--Back cover.

"The major thread and pattern concerns the role of women. While only women can command the power of the matrix and the secret sciences which keep Darkover from Terran hands, in most respects they are still chattel ... Yet there are the strange bands of pledged women known as the Free Amazons, equal to men and outside the laws that keep the rest of their sex subservient. And it is the Free Amazons who provide the key to ... the Terran-Darkover dilemma."--Cover, page four, paperback edition.

"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."--Back cover.

When a Terran ship crashed on Darkover, many of the colonists and crew wished to stay and build an Earthlike society on the alien planet. They might be the most intelligent species on that world and could make themselves its lords and masters. They didn''t realize the dangers that lurked until the Ghost Wind began to blow and the powers of Darkover worked to claim them completely...