Most Popular Books by Robert Holdstock

Back in print after over a decade, the haunting sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning Mythago Wood

Back in print after a decade, a novel of the classic Mythago cycle

The mystery of Ryhope Wood, Britain''s last fragment of primeval forest, consumed George Huxley''s entire long life. Now, after his death, his sons have taken up his work. But what they discover is numinous and perilous beyond all expectation.

A father uses virtual reality to travel to another world to save his daughter. The girl, who was kidnaped, is being held by a shaman.

A young Merlin revives the ancient hero Jason for a far-ranging quest in the acclaimed author’s “dazzling reframing of Arthurian myth and Greek legend” (Publishers Weekly). Centuries before he meets Arthur, Merlin wanders the earth, an eternally young traveler on the path of magic and learning. During his journeys he encounters Jason and joins his search for the Golden Fleece. It is a decision that will cost him dear . . . Hundreds of years later, Merlin hears of a screaming ship in a northern lake and divines that it is the Argo . . . that Jason still screams out for his sons, thought to be murdered by his wife Medea. But death is not the end, and Merlin’s trek to the north leads to the revival of both man and ship, and a new quest, with new companions—to find Jason’s sons. Roving from the frozen north to the blighted island that will become Arthur’s realm, from the deep forests of ancient Britain to the sun-washed shores of ancient Greece, Merlin’s journey is an epic tale of mystery and enchantment. With Celtika, World Fantasy Award–winning author Robert Holdstock begins a retelling of the Arthurian legend unlike any other.

At the heart of Ryhope Wood, Steven and the mythago Guiwenneth live in the ruins of a Roman villa close to a haunted fortress from the Iron Age, from which Guiwenneth''s myth arose. She is comfortable here, almost tied to the place, and Steven has long since abandoned all thought of returning to his own world. They have animals, protection and crops. They also have two children, a combination of human and mythago. Jack is like his father, an active boy keen to know all about `the outer world''; Yssobel takes after her mother, even to her long auburn hair. But this idyll cannot last. The hunters who protected Guiwenneth as a child have come to warn her she is in danger. Yssobel is dreaming increasingly of her Uncle Christian, Steven''s brother, who disappeared into Lavondyss, and Jack wants to see ''the outer world'' more than anything. Events are about to overtake them.

In those days Broceliande was a terrible place, an ancient gloomy forest growing over misty dells, forgotten stones, a place of hidden lakes and strangling thickets. Though the true heart of Broceliande could never be found, the stink of its corruption oozed from the edgewood, shedding ghosts like autumn leaves. This was the forest of legend, where Merlin had come to dream his magic and the enchantress Vivien had come to beguile that magic from him. Martin and Rebecca have long since fled the forest, but when they are forced to return years later for their mother''s funeral, they are at once ensnared in the forest''s net of enchantment, an evil that has held the local villages in a root-strong grip. And when Rebecca gives birth to Daniel, a beautiful child who is deaf, dumb and blind, she finds herself sucked into a twilight world where she can see only strange, mysterious shadows.

"The first is a man who needs you and will use you. He will weaken you dangerously. The second is a man you betrayed, though you believe otherwise. He wishes to kill you and can do so easily. The third is a ship that is more than a ship. She grieves and broods. She will carry you to your grave." These three warnings greet Merlin on his return to Alba, the future England, to the deserted fortress of Taurovinda---the Hill of the White Bull. He is not the only one making the journey: Urtha, High King of the Cornovidi, is coming home to reclaim his stronghold, and Jason is sailing in on the Argo to seek his younger son, hiding somewhere in the kingdom. But Urtha''s fortress has been taken by warriors from Ghostland; they claim it as their own. There will be war against the Otherworld. In this sequel to Celtika, Robert Holdstock weaves myth and history into a fabulous tale of honor, death, and magic. At its center, moving along his never-ending path, is Merlin himself, an enchanter in the prime of his life, reckless, curious, powerful, yet a stranger to his own past---a past that is catching up with him. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A fabulous tale of honour, vengeance and magic by one of the great fantasists of modern times.

Fantasy-roman.

A son searching for his father in a British forest discovers a world teeming with live mythological characters. One of them is a Celtic princess-warrior and he falls in love with her.

There is a landscape between reality and dreams, a strange and primitive country that exists upon the edge of our waking world. Michael Whitlock knows that country well. His best friend lives there... It beings with a scatter of earth, thrown over the infant by unseen hands, a haunting attack that is repeated day after day, culminating with an explosive fall of mud that nearly kills the boy. And found in those tons of raw, wet earth: flints, chalk artefacts, and remains of a primitive shrine and the dismembered carcase of a hunting dog. The Whitlocks'' house, in the Kentish Weald, stands near a chalk-pit, and it is here that their son, Michael creates his preculiar imaginary world, making his camp by the pile of grave-earth from that early attack. Unaware of what is happening to him, the boy touches and uses the strange force that now ebbs and flows in the pit, And when the haunting returns, this time it is more subtle, almost wonderful in its secutive nature. Torn between a fear of the supernatural and greed for the results of Michael''s power, his adoptive parents are helpless. It is left to Françoise Jeury, a psyhic investigator, to piece together the bizarre truth of th epit and the shrine and the oddly silent boy.

The Fear - mysterious, unstoppable, this deadly plague is slowly wiping out humanity. And only one world seems to offer hope of sanctuary - Ree''hdworld, home of the only other intelligent beings in the universe. But Ree''hdworld is not as safe as it seems. For something has been happening to the natives - both the friendly Ree''hd and their more primitive kinsmen, the Rundii. And only three people stand any chance of discovering and surviving the danger that the humans of Ree''hdworld will soon face: Kristina, an Earthwoman who is slowly "going Ree''hd"; Maguire, a blind man who should have died centuries ago and who, living, has seen all the secrets of the universe; and Zeitman, a brilliant scientist who holds the key to salvation on Ree''hdworld in his mind - if only he can discover it in time¿

Winner of the World Fantasy Award "I am placing this entry at the beginning of my edited journal for reasons that will become apparent. Time is very short for me now, the final part of the ritual draws near... I cannot pretend that I am not frightened." There were these two British writers, one lived in the country, the other in the city. The country writer loved to visit the city and partake of brandy and Greek kebabs in the local hostelry. The city writer liked to visit the country and guzzle ale and barbecued steak under the apple trees. The two writers needed an excuse for these indulgences, and so they invented one, and this excuse was called "collaborating on a story" ... It soon emerged that the story was to be about a legendary tree, which they both vaguely recalled from the tales their grandfathers used to tell them of mystery and myth. Soon they were delving with suppressed excitement into old documents at the British Museum and began to come up with some frightening discoveries. The first of these finds was in studying the original text, in Anglo-Saxon, of the Old English poem "The Dream of the Rood". The marrying of the "tree" (crucifixion cross) and the "thorn" (a runic character) was too elaborately regular to be an accident of metre or alliterative language. Other discoveries followed, and the story gradually surfaced, like a dark secret from its burial mound. The Ragthorn: a dark and unsettling World Fantasy Award-winning novella by Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth. Also included in this volume, two bonus stories: "The Fabulous Beast" by Garry Kilworth, and "The Charisma Trees" by Robert Holdstock. Robert Holdstock: ''Britain''s best fantasist ... these are the visions of a real artist.'' - The Times ''Our finest living mythmaker. His narratives - intense, exuberant, earthy, passionate, dense with metaphor - are new trails through the ancient forest of our imaginations. An essential writer.'' - Stephen Baxter ''No other author has so successfully captured the magic of the wildwood.'' - Michael Moorcock ''A new expression of the British genius for true fantasy.'' - Alan Garner, on Mythago Wood Garry Kilworth: ''Garry Kilworth is arguably the finest writer of short fiction today, in any genre.'' - New Scientist ''Kilworth is one of the most significant writers in the English language.'' - Fear Magazine ''Probably one of the finest writers of short stories Britain has ever produced.'' - Bookstove Online ''Kilworth is a master of his trade.'' - Punch Magazine

Wondrous beings inhabit these woods - creatures born of mythic fable and the mortal subconscious: a snow woman beckons; a scientist succumbs to an age-old madness, tale-tellers weave extraordinary yarns of terrifying primal power. Explore a dark and secret place where daemons roam, where conjurers work their awesome pagan magic in eight stunning short stories of exhilarating imagination by the acclaimed author of Lavondyss and the World Fantasy Award-winning classic Mythago Wood.

This “toothy follow-up to Datlow’s first-rate Blood Is Not Enough” offers “admirably inventive variations on vampirism” (Kirkus Reviews). Featuring stories by Jonathan Carroll, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Robert Silverberg, A Whisper of Blood is a “consistently engrossing anthology” from award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Publishers Weekly). Continuing to expand the boundaries of the concept of vampirism—as she did in her first collection, Blood Is Not Enough—Datlow has assembled eighteen fascinating stories that range from tales of literal vampires to what she calls “metaphorical bloodsuckers,” who can drain another’s life force without ever sinking their teeth into necks. In “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” by Suzy McKee Charnas, an elderly Jewish woman who’s taken her own life has second thoughts and makes a deal to become a vampire to stay immortal, the only condition being she has to drink blood by request only. An amnesiac operative tries to sort out if a secret government agency is trying to help him regain his memory or is wiping it clean in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Kafkaesque “Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?” And in Jonathan Carroll’s “The Moose Church,” a tourist in Sardinia is literally scarred by asking questions of death in his dreams . . . A Whisper of Blood includes contributions by Suzy McKee Charnas, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Silverberg, Kathe Koja, Elizabeth Massie, Barry N. Malzberg, Rick Wilber, Jonathan Carroll, Thomas Ligotti, Melissa Mia Hall, David J. Schow, Jack Womack, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Thomas Tessier, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, K. W. Jeter, Pat Cadigan, and Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth.

9780905895833:Synopsis coming soon.......

The Merlin Codex brings together Robert Holdstock''s Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings in one superb omnibus. Recounting a young Merlin''s epic story, The Merlin Codex moves through the classical world of Jason (of the Argonauts fame) and his wife Medea. Jealously guarding his gift as every act of magic shortens his life, Merlin weaves his plots across the centuries, showing us echoes of the man and the stories we know from Arthurian legend. Robert Holdstock was unanimously hailed by critics as the best contemporary author of SF and Fantasy. By mixing Greek and Celtic mythologies happily around an immortal character, Holdstock once again touches on the great universal myths as he did so brilliantly in his Mythago Wood saga, going beyond the limits of Fantasy.

When Odin''s curse fell upon him, Harald Swiftaxe, the young Norse warrior, lusty in love and battle, was fully human no longer. He was incensed with the animal rage of the god''s devotees, the Berserkers. The snarling ferocious savagery of the bear possessed him. Immune to fire and steel, frenzied by the smell of blood and the sight of torn human flesh, he was driven to the worst of human deeds . . . The stench of fear was meat and drink to him, and cowering women learned of his cruel, insatiable lust. The bear screeched its ecstasy - yet at times the man dimly understood the horror. Could the demon god be killed, the spell lifted...? If there was a way, the price of failure would be high, greater than death itself . . .

On the planet Aeran, the original colonists have undergone a drastic change: under the influence of some strange psychic force they have forgotten their identity and created a new culture - an exact reconstruction of the Stone Age society that flourished in Ireland 6,000 years ago. Has some strange racial memory been awakened? Or are both cultures the product of a social blueprint implanted throughout the cosmos by a long-vanished race?

From The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to the fantastic work of Robert Holdstock, one of modern fantasy''s most original and influential voices. Holdstock''s Mythago Wood, winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, is regarded as the definitive treatment of the wildwood, and his Merlin Codex trilogy is one of the few truly original takes on the Arthurian legend. This omnibus contains two of his early SF novels: Earthwind and Where Time Winds Blow and a collection of his highly-acclaimed short fiction, In the Valley of the Statues.

Illustrated by John Avon...( and others).

Plusieurs siècles avant de rencontrer Arthur, Merlin erre sur les chemins du monde, immortel et jeune, à la recherche du Savoir. Devenu l''ami du héros grec Jason, il se lance avec lui dans la quête de la Toison d''or. Mais les sortilèges de la magicienne Médée transforment cette aventure en cauchemar... Sept cents ans plus tard, Merlin découvre que l''esprit tourmenté de son ancien ami vit toujours, noyé au fond d''un lac avec son navire mythique, l''Argo. Commence alors une extraordinaire épopée où s''entrechoquent la vengeance d''un roi celte, l''amour d''une chamane nordique pour Merlin, l''invasion de la Grèce par une armée barbare et la quête désespérée de Jason pour retrouver ses enfants. Mais qui est réellement Médée ? Pourquoi s''acharne-t-elle contre Jason et Merlin ? Et que signifient ces étranges souvenirs qui surgissent parfois, laissant l''enchanteur abasourdi ? Des glaces du Grand Nord aux sanctuaires grecs en passant par les forêts brumeuses de la future Angleterre et les fleuves sacrés de Germanie, ce premier tome d''une trilogie pleine de bruit et de fureur nous entraîne à travers toute l''Europe, dans le sillage d''un Merlin à la recherche de ses origines. Entre le vacarme des batailles et le souffle des légendes, Robert Holdstock - grand maître de la fantasy anglaise, couronné par de nombreux prix - brosse l''univers fascinant, tragique mais plein d''humour, des mémoires de Merlin.

A horror novel set in a quiet English town where a church font is surrounded by legend and stories of suicide and madness. To June Hunter it is a prison, holding the soul of her son - and for all it is a deadly danger.