Best Selling Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley

A magnificent, colorful novel of the circus world of the 1940s and 1950s, rich in detail, bursting with power and emotion. Mario Santelli, a member of the famous flying Santelli family, is a great trapeze artist. Tommy Zane is his protege. As naturally and gracefully as they soar through the air, the two flyers find themselves falling in love. Mario and Tommy share sweet stolen moments of passion, but the real intensity of their relationship comes from their total devotion to one another and to their art. As public figures in a conservative era, they cannot reveal their love. But they will never renounce it. A tremendously moving tale, a rich family saga, a wise and compassionate portrait of a special love in a special world.

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.

Follows the lives of two women in Atlantis and the destinies that will shape the fate of their descendents.

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.

Since time immemorial, the Kingdoms of Sun and of Night have been at war. Pamina, daughter of the Starqueen, supreme symbol of the Night, and of Sarastro, King of the Royal House of the Sun, must now choose which of her parents'' ways she will follow. Together with her love, Prince Tamino, she must face the Ordeals at the Court of Wisdom, of Earth and Air, of Fire and Water. Only if she and Tamino pass all these trials can they have a life together. If this sounds like the plot of the opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), that''s because it was one of MZB''s favorite operas - and the inspiration for this book.

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.

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.

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!

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?

The continuing saga of the inhabitants of Avalon sees a young boy raised in secret after his parents are killed by traitors returning home to prove his worth and lead his followers to victory while wielding the newly forged sword Excalibur. Original.

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.

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.

Former spy Colin MacLaren, who fought black magic in World War II, takes on black magic in present-day America. By the author of Gravelight.

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.

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 novel that truly begins the bestselling Avalon saga...

Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever. Her best friend Elizabeth Mackintosh, a musician and anthropologist, and her fiance, linguist David Lorne, want to marry and have children, which means they need a planet they can settle on and make their lives'' work. They are very excited about the new planet, especially when they realize that it''s a lost Terran colony. As five young lives and their very different cultures meet, all of them will be changed by the encounter.

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...

Fantasy novel set in the world of Darkover.

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

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.

After Lew Alton unwittingly roused the fire demon Sharra, the Sword of Aldones was the only weapon that could lay her to rest again. But only one man could wield the sword, and getting it was an even bigger problem.

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 Forest House tells of an era of upheaval and change. The Roman grip on their empire was slackening; the Druidic Order - far stronger that the tiny Christian sect - was itself in turmoil. Caught in the centre of the conflict is a young British girl of druidic family, chosen to be a priestess, and a roman tribune, ambitious for power but - as the son of a British mother - torn between two cultures. This is a dramatic, illuminating tale of rebellion and religion.

Of all the worlds of the Galaxy, only the Matriarchy of Isis/Cinderella has returned to an ancient social order. It is on Isis that women rule, their control total and unbending. On Isis men are regarded as dangerous animals or, at best, as sexual playthings. And on Isis the great enigma of the known universe, the Builder Ruins - last remnant of an unknown, ancient culture. Within those strange Ruins, something survives - something which speaks to the women of Isis and to no one else.

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

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...