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| Dreams Of Dark And Light: The Great Short Fiction Of Tanith Lee |
Short story collection.
Nominated for the 1987 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection/Anothology.
Nominated as no. 14 in the Best Collection category in the 1987 Locus Poll.
| Publication of The Birthgrave in
1975 heralded a new and brilliant luminary in the firmament of modem fantasy. Ostensibly a
sword-and-sorcery epic in the tradition of Robert E. Howard, this novel about a youthful
heroine with incipient psychic powers astounded readers with its striking originality and
intense emotional impact. Tanith Lee today is one of the most versatile and respected
writers of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT represents a
massive midcareer retrospective of her achievements over the previous decade. Here are unforgettable tales of werewolves that prowl chateaux, an Earthwoman in exile on a distant planet, demons that inhabit bodies of the living dead, a race of vampiric creatures who prey upon a cursed castle, and many other works of exotic vision, mythic science fiction, and contemporary horror. Also included are two stories that have received the World Fantasy Award, "Elle est Trois, (La Mort)" and "The Gorgon," making DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT a distinguished one volume library of myth-weaving at its most eloquent and evocative. Although acclaimed as the "Princess Royal of Heroic Fantasy," Tanith Lee has long since transcended genre conventions to create a body of work of remarkable psychological depth and artistic distinction. In her imaginative sympathy with characters, human or otherwise, Lee remains unexcelled in the portrayal of deeply felt emotions. Her stories explore many of the most significant themes in twentieth-century literature - life and death, coming of age, the nature of good and evil, love in all its manifestations. And she remains, above all, one of the great natural storytellers working in the English language ... Tanith Lee truly has become the Scheherazade of our time. (dustwrapper copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| Drinking Sapphire Wine |
Novel. 60,000 words.
The second volume in the Four-BEE series.
Collected in Drinking Sapphire Wine (Incorporating Don't
Bite The Sun).
| Four-BEE was an utopian city. If you
didn't mind being taken care of all your long long life, having a wild time as a
"jang" teenagers able to do anything you wanted from killing yourself
innumerable times, changing bodies, changing sex, and raising perpetual hell, it could be
heaven. But for one inhabitant there was always something askew. He/she had tried everything and yet the taste always soured. And then he/she succeeded in committing the one illegal act-and was thrown out of heaven forever. But forever is not a term any native of that robotic utopia understood. And so he/she challenged the rules, declared independence, and set out to prove that a human was still smarter than the cleverest and most protective robot. You don't need to have read Tanith Lee's DON'T BITE THE SUN, which set the original scene, to find this new one of the same high merit that distinguished this author's THE BIRTHGRAVE. (back cover copy) |
French Translations:
German Translations:
Italian Translations:
Swedish Translations:
Electronic Publications:
Electronic Publications in German:
| Drinking Sapphire Wine (Incorporating Don't Bite The Sun) |
Omnibus.
Collects both novels in the Four-BEE series.
Contents: Don't Bite The Sun; Drinking
Sapphire Wine.
| It's jang to be wild and
sexy and reckless. It's jang to change your body, or your gender. It's jang to do daredevil tricks and even get killed a few times … you could always come alive again. And it's jang to try to sabotage your robot-run world. But when the madcap chase for pleasure begins to drag and you start looking for a real life to live, you find the robots have left nothing worthwhile for you to do. Searching for a way out of this pointless existence you make a lot of painful and stupid mistakes. But you fight your way free and you start a new life - in exile. ... and find you have to cope with sightseers and hangers-on, all uninvited and now exiled with you - and finally come face to face with the greatest and most deadly threat of all ...(back cover copy) |
Japanese Translations:
Electronic Publications:
| The Earth Is Flat: Tales from the Flat Earth and Elsewhere |
Short story collection.
Contents: The Origin Of Snow (A Story Of The Flat Earth), The Man Who Stole The Moon, The Snake, The Pain Of Glass, I Bring Your Forever, Foolish, Wicked, Clever, and Kind, Blue Vase Of Ghosts, After I Killed Her, Cold Spell, Beauty Is The Beast, Into Gold, The Truce, The God Okrem, and The Kingsdoms Of The Air.
| In those days the Earth was flat. In the 1970s and '80s, Tanith Lee composed five books' worth of Tales of the Flat Earth, a fantasy series compared to both Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique and the Arabian Nights. In later years she would return to the seting for five more stories. All five are included here, along with many others that showcase Lee's talent for crafting spellbinding tales of heroic warriors, enigmatic magicians, and strange deities. (back cover copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| East Of Midnight |
Young adult novel. 55,000 words.
| The last thing he remembered was the darkness in the hollow below the stone, and the dogs belting overhead, cheated of their quarry - Dekteon, sometimes called Red, the rebellious runaway slave. Why was he lying now, here, in this wood of burning red leaves, with a cold red sunrise in the sky? What sky? And when the cart came so suddenly out of the wood there was something strange about it, too. The horse that drew it had the feet of a bear, and the man who drove it had phosphorescent eyes, or so it seemed to Dekteon. Yet it appeared he was expected. 'Come,' the man called. 'Come, hurry and get in.' Dekteon was afraid. Where would the cart take him? 'You have no other place to go to,' the pale man said. And that was true enough. 'I've nothing to lose,' said Dekteon, and the words seemed ominous. Yet how could he know what worlds there might be to lose - or win? (dustwrapper copy) |
Estonian translations:
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Electronic Publications:
| Écrit Avec Du Sang: 10 contes du vampire |
French language short story collection edited and annotated by Léa Silhol.
Contents: "Les Vampires Sont Français" [Vampires Are
French]; "Rouge Comme Le Sang" [Red As Blood,
translated by Estelle Valls de Gomis]; "Il Bacio (Il Chiave), Le Baiser (La
Clef)" [Il Bacio (Il Chiave) - The Kiss (The Key),
translated by Estelle Valls de Gomis]; "L'Amant Vampire" [The Vampire Lover, translated by Sandrine Jehanno];
"Ne-Me-Mords-Pas Ou Fleur de Feu" [Bite-Me-Not Or,
Fleur De Fur, translated by Estelle Valls de Gomis]; "Fleurs Hivernales" [Winter Flowers, translated by Sandrine Jehanno]; "Miroir,
Miroir"; [Mirror, Mirror, translated by Sandrine
Jehanno]; "Nunc Dimittis" [Nunc Dimittis,
translated by Estelle Valls de Gomis]; "La Vampiresse" [La Vampiresse, translated by Estelle Valls de Gomis]; "La
Merveilleuse Machine Qui Mord" [The Beautiful Biting
Machine, translated by Sandrine Jehanno]; "Le Troisième Cavalier" [The Third Horseman, translated by Benoît Piret];
"Histoires de Sang, Histoires d'Encre ..." by Léa Silhol; "Les
Vampires de Tanith Lee: Une Bibliographie en Mouvement ..." by Léa Silhol; Vampires Are French.
| Celui qui croit avoir tout lu sur les
vampires ne connaît pas Tanith Lee. Il ne sait rien des demeures embuées d'ombres
où se frôlent les mains des seigneurs et des familiers. Il n'a pas entendu le chant
de deuil de Feroluce, lance vers ses frères aux ailes noires, et ne sait pas le nom du
prince qui viendra réveiller Blanche Neige. Il n'a jamais effleuré l'épaule de la Machine qui Mord sur les planets lointaines, ni erré dans les neiges étoilées de fleurs cruelles. Ni, peut-être, partagé un verre avec une actrice déchue, ou déchiffré à ce jour les secrets que savant les miroirs. Il lui reste encore, en somme, à tout découvrir des Ténèbres. Il peut à present le faire en tenant la main de la créatice de la terrible famille Scarabae et des inoubliables Seigneurs de la Terre Plate ... En suivant l'écrivaine au style le plus somptueux de sa generation, nouvelliste d'exception, couronnée maîtresse ès Fantasy par les plus grands. Le temps de dix texts rares, introuvables, se dévoilent ici les vampires de Tanith Lee, ou les vampires tout court ... guides indispensable d'une éternelle nuit. (back cover copy) |
| Electric Forest |
Novel. 65,000 words.
| The world called Indigo turned upside
down for Magdala Cled one unexpected morning. From being that world's only genetic
misfit, the shunned outcast of an otherwise ideal society, she became the focus of
attention for mighty forces. Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo ... which only she, the hated one, could possibly circumvent. An extraordinary incursion into hard-core science fiction by the same brilliant and colorful talent that produced THE BIRTHGRAVE and DEATH'S MASTER. A selection of the Science Fiction Book Club. (back cover copy) |
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Electronic Publications:
Electronic Publications in German:
| Elephantasm |
Novel. 120,000 words.
| Annie Ember lives in hopeless poverty
with her sister Rose and her wicked brother-in-law ... until the day that Annie
discovers the mysterious, exotic shop where she buys, for one penny, a tiny and ancient
ivory elephant. Soon afterwards a grisly murder leaves Annie without home or family, but
employment is found for her in a country house far away. Sir Hampton Smolte made his fortune out in India, and has brought back not only his wealth but also an obsessive hatred towards that conquered land where he once commanded a mercenary army. His mansion is fanciful and extraordinary, all scarlet and gold, like a fairy-tale raja's palace set down in green English parkland. There Annie is to become a drudge - a scullery maid in this house full of stuffed animals, eccentric servants, and the even more peculiar Smolte family. But soon she catches the eye of the handsome Rupert who, like his father, retains a fascination with India. Entranced, she succumbs to his attentions - till one night she learns in disgust and terror just what his lovemaking entails ... Annie's fear and helpless fury provide the catalyst which will turn this dream-house into a place of panic and the impossible - letting in all the power of the jungle, and unlocking the darkest secrets of Hampton Smolte's beginnings. (dustwrapper copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| Empress Of Dreams |
Short story collection.
Contents: Odds Against The Gods; Sleeping Tiger; The Demoness;
The Sombrus Tower; Winter White; In The Balance;
Northern Chess; Southern Lights; Mirage And Magia;
The Three Brides Of Hamid-Dar; The Pain Of Glass; These Beasts;
Two Lions, A Witch, And The War-Robe; A Tower of Arkrondurl; The Woman In Scarlet;
and Evillo The Uncunning.
| Throughout her forty-year career, Tanith Lee proved herself adept at numerous genres, including high fantasy, horror, science fiction, and combinations thereof. One of her specialties was the variety of herois fantasy known as sword-and-sorcery. Novels such as The Birthgrave, Night's Master, and The Storm Lord are highly regarded by both fans and critics, but she has a wealth of short stories to her credit as well. Sixteen of Tanith's tales of swords and sorcery appear in this collection. When you read them, you will discover why she deserves such exalted titles as "Princess Royal of Heroic Fantasy" and "The Empress of Dreams". (back cover copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| Eva Fairdeath |
Novel. 90,000 words.
Note: This book contains an "Author's Foreword," dated 1993, in which
Tanith Lee relates the history of this novel. It was originally written in 1973.
| The white-haired girl from the marsh
settlement was running for her life down the derelict highway. Uncountable years before, things with spinning wheels and ice-green eyes had roared and smoked up and down this road. Now it was wide open and empty of everything except the girl. Eva - Belmort's daughter - the one who had grown up slight and pale out of the dark, dun, heavy men and women who toiled their hearts out by Foulmarsh. Today, tomorrow, always ... In a future world polluted to the point of anarchy and dissolution, the trees are dead, the sky is yellow, and no birds sing. Everything and everyone is tinged with madness. For Eva, in such a debased society, there seems no role but that of some man's object and possession ... But then, one day, arrives the stranger with the gun - the man with blue eyes and hair as white as her own. Roaming the tortured landscape with his wagon, Steel is a seller of death ... but for Eva he provides hope of escape from Foulmarsh and her degradation. Urged on by a power of love and hate impossible to fathom, Eva's travels take her to distant towns and villages full of danger and surprises - and arouse in her strong passions and dark emotions she cannot harness ... Filled with unforgettable characters and disturbing premonitions, Eva Fairdeath is a powerful fantasy enshrouding a reality that may not be ignored. (dustwrapper copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| Faces Under Water |
Novel. 70,000 words.
Book I of The Secret Books Of Venus.
Collected in The Secret Books Of Venus 1 & 2.
Nominated as no. 8 in the Best Horror/Dark Fantasy Novel category in the 1999 Locus Poll.
| From the world-renowned fantasy author
of The Secret Books of Paradys comes a chilling new fantasy series of alchemy and
horror. In this new series, Tanith Lee weaves intricate plots around the elements of
water, fire, earth, and air. The first in this new series, Faces Under Water
immerses readers in the timeless beauty of Venice and the secret terror that lies beneath. In the hedonistic atmosphere of an eighteenth-century Venice Carnival, gaiety turns deadly when Furian Furiano happens upon a mask of Apollo floating in the murky waters of the canals. The mask hides a sinister art, and Furian finds himself trapped in a bizarre tangle of love, obsession, and evil, stumbling upon a macabre society of murderers. The beautiful but elusive Eurydiche holds the key to these murders and leads him further into a labyrinth of black magic and ancient alchemy. For all readers who fell in love with Lee's Paradys series and for all those enchanted and terrified by the fantastical, Faces Under Water will be sure to thrill. (dustwrapper copy) |
Japanese Translations:
Electronic Publications:
| Fatal Women |
Short story collection.
Tanith Lee writing as Esther Garber.
Contents: Rherlotte; Virgile, The Widow;
The Umbrella; The Woman Under The Umbrella (Juliette Shapiro writing as
Yolande Sorores); Green Iris; Rain
(with Juliette Shapiro writing as Yolande Sorores); Le Jardin.
| In the Paris of 1900, Phèdre is an assasin. She assists
female acquaintances suffering from specific male abuse - by 'removing' the abuser. Phèdre is sexually
predatory but emotionally cool. Until she meets Rherlotte de Gillan in the cemetery of St. Luc.
Rherlotte's red-haired beauty and enigmatic, dignified sweetness soak relentlessly through Phèdre'a shell,
like honey. And soon the two women are joined in a dangerous game that is both courtship and duel. Elsewhere, in the late 1800s, the provincial town of Bois-la-Diane begins to be haunted by the dark, phantasmal creature - Virgile, the professional widow. Laure, bored with rural life, her childhood girlfriend and the disappointing 'ladies club' that holds its scandalous sessions in an old chateau, is instantly hynotised by Virgile. Virgile's fee is always death, and not only Laure's, but that of another. Each of the eponymous heroines who people Fatal Women has her own secret - one poisonous and potentially lethal, one bittersweet, and one that concerns perhaps the most priceless painting on earth. (back cover copy) |
| Fatal Women: The Esther Garber Novellas |
Short story collection.
Tanith Lee writing as Esther Garber.
NOTE: This revised editon omits the stories The Woman Under The Umbrella (Juliette Shapiro writing as
Yolande Sorores) and Rain (with Juliette Shapiro writing as Yolande Sorores).
Contents: Rherlotte; Virgile, The Widow;
The Umbrella; Green Iris; Femme Fatale
and Le Jardin; Afterword by Mavis Haut.
| World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee channels the allusive Esther Garber
to tell these dark, erotic tales of lesbian ardor and obsession. The "fatal women" found within these pages lead exotic
lives and adventures and have grim secrets. From fin de siècle Paris to Egypt of the 1930s and contemporary England, the
Garber novellas create feverish dreams of danger, scandal, and sensuality. THis new edition includes the new novella "Femme Fatale," never before in print, as well as an essay by Mavis Haut, author of The Hidden Library of Tanith Lee, about the eminence of this collection within Lee's body of work. (back cover copy) |
Electronic Publications:
| Forests Of The Night |
Short story collection.
Contents: Bloodmantle; The
Gorgon; The Tree: A Winter's Tale; I Was Guillotined Here; Crying In
The Rain; Elle Est Trois, (La Mort); Nicholas; The Hunting Of Death: The
Unicorn; A Madonna Of The Machine; Red As Blood; The Rakshasa; Bite-Me-Not Or, Fleur De Fur; By
Crystal Light Beneath One Star; La Reine Blanche; Sweet Grapes; The Tenebris Malgraph;
Black As A Rose; Rachel; Down Below; White As Sin, Now.
Note: each story in this collection is preceded by a brief introductory note by the
author.
| "The forests of the mind are
benighted, dark and dazzling places. Things wander there that shine, and burn, and
bite." This superb collection of twenty short stories is drawn from the wide range of a writer hailed as "the Scheherazade of our time." Tanith Lee's powerful and disturbing fictions explore the forests of the imagination and the creatures that dwell there: the wolves and vampires: tigers and unicorns: dwarves, demons and enchanters. Set in locations as exotic and diverse as India, the Greek islands, Paris, London, the future and the Flat Earth, these stories present us with a rich feast which, even as it delights and entertains us will cunningly reveal the old, dark bones of humankind. The stories for the collection have been selected by the author, and illustrate the remarkable scope, versatility and artistry of her work. Forests of the Night includes award-winning tales like "The Gorgon" and "Elle est trois la Mort," eight new, unpublished stories, and the highly-acclaimed "Crying in the Rain," inspired by the Tchernobyl disaster. Each story is prefaced with a short introduction by the author which offers fascinating and tantalising glimpses into a writer's world. (dustwrapper copy) |
Electronic Publications:
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