New Releases by Marion Zimmer Bradley

A daughter revisits the home of her occultist parents to learn why they were killed the night they tried to return the old gods to Earth. The house is occupied by new occultists, including one who sends her blood racing. Fortunately, the ghost of her father is around to protect her from him. By the author of The Mists of Avalon.

These two classic Darkover novels tell the epic tale of four people who challenged the ancient laws of the matrix towers.

Return to the genre-bending world of Darkover, to a trilogy that follows the thrilling story of two Free Amazon women In the three novels which comprise THE SAGA OF THE RENUNCIATES, Marion Zimmer Bradley tells the masterful tale of two valiant women who face and try to break the invisible chains of custom, convention, habit and expectation with which society binds women, and women bind themselves. Magdalen Lorne is a Terran woman born and reared on Darkover. She thinks herself the perfect Terran undercover Intelligence agent, and disguises herself as a Free Amazon to enable her to fulfill a mission to free a Terran man from kidnappers. But when she herself is captured by a band of real Renunciates, she discovers they have a harsh punishment for any pretenders: she must swear the Oath of the Free Amazons, relinquish her former life, and become a Renunciate in reality. Jaelle has been raised in the harsh patriarchal environment of the Dry Towns. Her mother Mellora is a Comyn woman who has been kidnapped in order to breed laran-gifted offspring for her barbarian "husband." But when a desperate, pregnant Mellora dies in childbirth following a daring escape aided by a band of Renunciates, the still young Jaelle is adopted into the Guild, and becomes the Free Amazon Jaelle n''ha Mellora, a woman who has never known kindness from a man. Together Magda, now known as Margali n''ha Tsabet, and her Guild-sister Jaelle will follow a twisting course neither could have predicted. A course which will lead them to question every aspect of themselves and of their two so-different societies. And one which will eventually set them on a life-threatening journey not only to the frozen ends of the physical world, but to the perilous limits of the spiritual overworld as well.

The Fall of Neskaya, Book One of the Clingfire Trilogy, marks the legendary author''s final return to Darkover before her death. Set in the tumultuous era of The Hundred Kingdoms, a terrible time of strife and war, this unique fantasy world is divided into a mutlitude of small belligerent domains vying for power and land. One ambitious and corrupt tyrant will stop at nothing to control Darkover-even wield the terrifying weapons of the matrix.

Traitor''s Sun continues the epic saga of Darkover, the award-winning series by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Her most brilliant and popular creation, the Darkover books take readers to a planet torn by rebellion--and struggling for freedom...

The planet of Darkover bathed in its blood red sun served as a convenient space port for the Terran Empire. Beyond that the Terrans knew little of the planet''s strange landscape, its vast mountain ranges, its deadly winds and its hostile inhabitants. Dan Barron, a simple space port despatcher, found himself alone and helpless in this alien world.

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!

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.

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.

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...

A feud between the Hammerfell and Stornleads to the murder of the Duke of Hammerfell.

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

Although the natives of Darkover are the descendants of a long-lost Terran colony ship, they distrust the Terran spacers who have recently taken up residence on their planet. Many feel that these strangers from space have the power to disrupt the entire society of Darkover. Yet despite the mutual prejudice between the peoples of Earth and Darkover, Terran Larry Montray and Kennard Alton, the heir to the Alton Domain, forge a bond of friendship which flourished even in the face of their families'' disapproval. Will their personal alliance fracture the stability of both their cultures?

The cross-currents of two cultures, one male-dominated, one egalitarian, combined with the human problems of two who switched allegiances, brings into focus all the deepest questions of love and marriage, justice and injustice. THENDARA HOUSE is a novel of speculation which has become a classic masterwork on the role of women on any world, past, present, or future.

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 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.

Bard di Asturien, ambitious soldier-outlaw, and of his opponent, Varzil the Good, who struggled to establish the Compact. And it is also the story of a man from distant Terra named Paul Harrell who was the exact duplicate of Varzil''s enemy.

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.

Here, in a single volume, it has been our intention to list, document and review every novel dealing, however slightly, with female variance, lesbianism or intense emotional relationships between women. We have also included a majority of the better known novels which, dealing primarily with male homosexuality, are of interest to the collector of variant fiction in general. In related supplements we have compiled lists of variant poetry, variant films, of the major book services and publishing houses where these books can be obtained, and of the homosexual press. The titles in the major portion of the Checklist are listed in a single comprehensive index by author. Information includes date published, number of reprints and publisher’s name. Brief reviews are included of most titles. An effort has been made in each case to distinguish whether the work under discussion is a novel about lesbianism, whether the variant content has been included mostly for shock effect, or whether (as in some excellent modern novels) homosexual characters appear incidentally to the other main themes of action in the book. In such a comprehensive listing, reviews must of necessity be brief. For further discussion of many of the titles listed here, with excellent and complete critical analysis of their variant content, the serious student or collector is earnestly urged to invest in the definitive and major work on the subject: FOSTER, Jeannette Howard; Sex Variant Women in Literature. N. Y. Vantage Press, 1956. Although now officially out of print, this book can occasionally be obtained second hand, and copies will soon be offered for sale through the Daughters of Bilitis publication, THE LADDER. (See appendix.) We have made no effort to give more than cursory reviews of titles which are discussed at length in Dr. Foster’s work. However, since the publication of the Foster book, many new novels of lesbianism have been published, and the diligent search of many collectors, working with the Checklist editors, has brought many old ones to light. We have tried to review in some detail the novels which were omitted from Dr. Foster’s work, and to strive for completeness, even at the expense of discriminatory judgment about the excellence or otherwise of the works included. Therefore this Checklist includes many works whose lesbian content was too slight, too subtle—or too “trashy”—to have come within the scope of the scholarly studies of Dr. Foster or the running column, Lesbiana, conducted by junior editor Gene Damon in the pages of THE LADDER. It is our further contention that many novels dealing with male homosexuality come also within the province of the serious collector of lesbiana. We make, however, no claim for completeness for novels which fall within the homosexual, rather than the lesbian province. In general, the male titles included in this list—clearly defined, in each case, by the sign (m)—have been included because they were of special interest to the editors and therefore are presumably of interest to other collectors of lesbiana. For those who wish a complete list of works dealing with male homosexuality, we suggest the comprehensive bibliography compiled by Noel I. Garde, discussed in the Appendix of Related Publications. Mr. Garde has indexed virtually every homosexual work from antiquity to the latest paperback shocker, and has also performed the mighty task of separating them into categories ... a task from which the Checklist editors have shrunk, though we have made some attempt at classification in our reviews and by awarding a plus sign to books of exceptional value.