Most Popular Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

Romilly uses her power to communicate with and control animals to aid the battle to depose the usurper of the throne of Darkover.

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

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!

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.

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.

Lew Alton was returning to Darkover - returning at the command of men who had once been all too glad to see him leave. For Lew, a Darkovan on his father''s side, and a Terran on his mother''s, had always walked between two worlds, accused by each of belonging to the other, and trusted by neither. Yet Lew alone had the power to understand both worlds and to save them from each other''s unknown forces. That was the reason he had returned at last - armed with the legendary sword of the Sharra matrix, whose destiny was to cross forces with the equally mystic Sword of Aldones in one mighty battle that would decide Darkover''s fate . . .(

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

This second volume of The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley''s Fantasy Magazine serves up a smorgasbord of magic and adventure. Encompassing a range of fantasy from classical to modern settings, this collection begins with an introduction by Bradley herself, in addition to her introductions to each individual story.

Introduces the 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.

Fantasy-roman.

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.

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...

Darkover: for some the planet beneath the bloody far-off sun, had the reputation of being a half-frozen lump of dust on the edge of nowhere. For Jeff Kerwin, Jr, Darkover meant only one thing - home. Returning there after many long years, Kerwin had not been prepared for what he was to find . . . For from the first day he set foot on the planet he had been hounded by a sinister, swarthy man who made no secret of the shadowing. Then there was the strange discovery that there was no record anywhere of his birth and childhood on Darkover. All the dark forces of this mysterious world were banding together to deny him - and Jeff Kerwin vowed to risk everything to find out why.

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.

Marion Zimmer Bradley''s beloved Avalon saga continues with the dramatic story of the ancestors of Avalon, from their life on the doomed island of Atlantis to their escape to the mist-shrouded isle of Britain.

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

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.

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. As soon as Margaret was of age, she fled her stormy home and took refuge on University where she was granted the position of assistant to a renowned musicologist. This prestigious job took her to many worlds, and when she was assigned to collect folk songs on Darkover, Margaret was curious and pleased. But under the light of the red sun, Margaret''s innocent excitement quickly waned. The world of her birth evoked long-buried memories, painful and terrifying, and she soon found herself driven by a destiny more dreadful than any nightmare. For the screaming woman and the silver man were merely markers on a trail - a trail which led into Margaret''s own mind, and toward a trap which had been set for her centuries before her birth...

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.

It''s a long wait until the Last Battle of Law and Chaos, when the forces of Good and Evil will clash for the final time. So what''s a body to do in the meantime? Lythande has to earn a living, after all. Music and magic are saleable skills--sometimes both together. There''s a magic lute.... Mermaids, dragons, small children--Lythande''s life is full of challenges, of which the biggest is never allowing the Secret to be revealed, on pain of total loss of magic... oh, and death.

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. Through the lives of pious Guinevere, ambitious Morgouse, austere Viviane and her successor as Lady of the Lake, Morgaine herself, this rich and haunting epic reveals a greater threat to the idyll than the Saxons. For the spread of patriarchal Roman ways and a narrow Christianity seem likely to alienate the Old People, and drive the ancient worship of the Mother forever into the mists...

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.

A volume in the Darkover saga presents four challengers to the planet''s sacred traditions--ruling cast member Damon; his betrothed; Earthman Andrew; and Andrew''s betrothed, a Keeper of the Sacred Tower

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...