An orphan girl battles an evil mage in this “stunningly vivid” fantasy from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Scent of Magic (Starlog). A mage, seeking to enslave the Valley and destroy the Forest, has brutally sundered a family. A mother has fled into the woods with her infant girl-child, while the depraved sorcerer holds the babe’s twin—a boy—captive in a black tower. The mother dies but the girl survives. Adopted by the strange denizens of the Forest—safe from the mage’s malevolent influence—she grows to young womanhood, cultivating a cherished skill that has been denied the others of her kind: the ability to truly hear the sounds of her world. But her future will be fraught with trial and terror, for only she can smash the chains that shackle the Balley and its inhabitants. It is her destiny to confront sorcerer and demon minions, and to oppose the one she must conquer and free: the magician’s protégé and her most powerful adversary. Her bane and blood. Her brother.

The story of Mizue, a housewife, and Kase, a traditional-style garden designer hired by her husband to landscape their home. As the garden takes shape, Mizue wakens to a new sensuality and desire, and her carefully structured life begins to crumble. Explores the psychology of human passion in an oblique language filled with references to art and aesthetic values.

Matt must confront a treacherous council of wizards and new, powerful enemies, all while dealing with the absence of Samsire, his alorath friend. Matt and his friends know that time is running out, and they must journey across Mundaria to uncover the mystery of the magical power emanating from the south.

While on a family camping trip, Sam, Polly, and Joe receive three feathers that lead them on a magical flying adventure. Simultaneous.

In poems at once profound and accessible, Nadia Colburn finds splendor and astonishment in a natural world—and a human world—that is deeply troubled yet still majestically beautiful. Both elegy and celebration, I Say the Sky addresses some of the most challenging aspects of human existence, from childhood trauma to environmental devastation, and discovers, in unexpected and clear-sighted ways, wisdom, wonder, and peace. Colburn's brilliant second book charts a journey to meet the self. From girlhood to parenthood, loss to discovery, in poems that sing, the book explores how meaning is made. Claiming the female voice from silence, the poems find their grounding in the body and achieve rootedness and hope. I Say the Sky is a meditative and ultimately inspiring book that will be savored by seasoned readers as well as those new to poetry.

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Based on a fable from Aesop, the Sun and the Wind test their strength by seeing which of them can cause a man to remove his coat, demonstrating the value of using gentle persuasion rather than brute force as a means of achieving a goal.