St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger. . . .
Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.
Sisters. They'll swipe your clothes, your boyfriends, your destiny. But it wasn't exactly Rayne's twin Sunny's fault. Magnus, a vamp hottie and coven leader, mistook Sunny for Rayne last month and bit her instead. Now they're doing the inter-species dating thing.
Turns out that for every generation, there's a Vampire Slayer - and this time around, it just happens to be Rayne MacDonald. Her first mission: infiltrate a seedy vamp bar downtown and expose its vampire owner for purposely spreading a blood disease he created himself - a task almost harder than passing trig.
After going it alone once, Rayne realizes she needs help. So Magnus sends his sexy Goth buddy Jareth to go undercover with her. And, frankly, Rayne wouldn't mind going under the covers with him. Maybe fate doesn't bite after all...
DRAGONFRIGATE WIZARD HALCYON BLITHE.
In the latest chapter of the young wizard's nautical education he finds himself second in command of a captured enemy vessel that must engage a demonship in combat before returning to port. Upon his return he is assigned duty on a dwarven dragonship where he and his shipmates encounter the deceit of politics and diplomacy before they can regain the security of their Arcanian dragonship and the company of their trusted crewmates.
Combining elements of Hornblower with Harry Potter, and Robert Louis Stevenson with Robin Hobb, the Halcyon Blithe are nautical tales rich in magic and intrigue set against a panorama of fantastic naval battles as we follow the career of a young midshipwizard as he moves up through the ranks of His Majesty's Navy.
* Who Fired the Phoenix?
* The Boy Who Cried Werewolf
* The Great Rough Beast
* Postscript on Prester John
* The Secret of Hyperborea
* What Gave All Those Mammoths Cold Feet?
And many more--fictional? authoritative? fantastic? deadpan?--investigations into the real, the true…and the things that should be true
PREFACE BY PETER S. BEAGLE
ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE BARR
"Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like."
Not a novel, not a book of short stories, Adventures in Unhistory is a book of the fantastic--a compendium of magisterial examinations of Mermaids, Mandrakes, and Mammoths; Dragons, Werewolves, and Unicorns; the Phoenix and the Roc; about places such as Sicily, Siberia, and the Moon; about heroic, sinister, and legendary persons such as Sindbad, and Aleister Crowley, and Prester John; and--revealed at last--the Secret of Hyperborea.
The facts are here, the foundations behind rumors, legends, and the imaginations of generations of tale-spinners. But far from being dry recitals, these meditations, or lectures, or deadpan prose performances are as lively, as crazily inventive, as witty as the best fiction of the author, a writer praised by Gardner Dozois as "one of the great short story writers of our times."
Who, on the subject of Dragons, could write coldly, dispassionately, guided only by logic? Certainly not Avram Davidson. Certain facts, these facts, deserve more than recitation; they deserve flourish, verve, gusto, style--the late, great Avram Davidson's unique voice. That prose which, in the words of Peter S. Beagle's Preface to this volume, "cries out to be read aloud."
The five have made sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can?
The children must experiment with and learn to control their strange abilities in order to escape their captors. Something very important must be at stake in their imprisonment.
Psi Phi is just like any sorority on campus-except for the part about them being half-blood vampires. Colby Blanchard emancipated her fellow halfbloods and laid the smackdown for some wayneeded new laws, but things still aren't good. The Vampire Tribunal is dumping the newest pledges on her lawn...bound and gagged. And Thomas, her hunky vampire investigator boyfriend, is being a little too much of a gentleman.
Things aren't exactly cushy for the ladies at the Psi Phi house. One sister wants to return to her vegan lifestyle-while another is constantly poised for a fistfight. And royal bloodsucker Ileana Romanov thinks everyone is her personal butler. And to top it off, leaked info on the sisters' whereabouts is bringing on some ugly, unexpected attacks. Either someone in the Tribunal wants them dead, orthere's a spy in the house, watching them day and night. Or if it's a full-blood, just night.
A bloodthirsty African warlord, and an international corporate magnate exploiting a land, a culture and a people, are equally anxious to stake their claim on the relic's unknown power. Annja's odyssey deep into the primeval jungles of Senegal becomes a desperate race to stop those eager to unleash the virulence of the Spider God .
Eleven-year-old Holly Wade and her twin siblings, Judy and Crockett, are sent to live with their grandparents in the small town of Dimsdale, Massachusetts when their father is declared missing in action in Vietnam. Dimsdale is nothing like Boston; there are only two other African-American children in the entire school. Even worse, Grandpa and Grandma Wade live in an old junkyard! While exploring one day, Holly, Judy, and Crockett wander into an overgrown hedge maze--and find themselves transported back in time to Dimsdale's past. Can they right an ancient wrong and free the town of Dimsdale from a witch's curse?
Fay Harper looks like any other teenage girl--any other Queen Bee, that is. She's blond, and beautiful, and very, very popular--the kind of popular that attracts boys like honey. Fay and her gang take a lot of risks, but so far they've managed to get away with everything. It's as if they are magically protected.
Summoned to Tulsa by an old friend whose son has fallen in with Fay's crowd, Diana Tregarde, practicing witch and successful romance novelist, quickly finds herself in hot water. The new girl at school, Monica Carlin, has come under sorcerous attack, but Diana cannot identify, or stop, the power-wielder. To make matters worse, there is an ancient being sleeping under Tulsa, a being who might be woken by the magic battles taking place in the city. What will happen then, even Diana cannot predict... in Mercedes Lackey's Jinx High.
Three unlikely heroes are Avalon's only hope. Tamwyn, the wilderness guide, must travel the secret pathway to the stars. Elli, the brave young priestess, must defeat a terrible sorcerer in a realm of utter darkness. And Scree, the eagleman, must lead his winged people to do what seems impossible . . .
This spectacular final volume of T. A. Barron's bestselling trilogy combines gripping adventure with profound ideas about the powerful connections between humanity and the world.
