Search Worlds Without End

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, June 1999, and appeared on Strange Horizons, 29 March 2004. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Ordinary People (2005).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

In the field of mad science, women have for too long been ignored, their triumphs misattributed to mere men. Society has seen the laboratory as the province of men. Jacob's Ladder electric arcs, death rays, even test tubes have phallic connotations, subliminally reinforcing the patriarchy. Thankfully, the women working to dangerous and/or questionable ends in the pages of Daughters of Frankenstein are unafraid of the patriarchy--indeed, as lesbian mad scientists, they prefer the company and comforts of their own gender.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists) - essay by Connie Wilkins
• 3 - From Alexander Pope to Splice - essay by Jess Nevins
• 13 - Infusion of Waking Dreams - short story by Aynjel Kaye
• 31 - Doubt the Sun - short story by Faith Mudge
• 49 - Meddling Kids - short story by Tracy Canfield
• 59 - Eldritch Brown Houses - short story by Claire Humphrey
• 67 - The Moorehead Maze Experiment - short story by Tim Lieder
• 85 - The Eggshell Curtain - short story by Romie Stott
• 101 - Poor Girl - short story by Traci Castleberry
• 121 - Bank Job Blues - short story by Melissa Scott
• 139 - The Long Trip Home - short story by A. J. Fitzwater
• 159 - Imaginary Beauties: A Lurid Melodrama - short story by Gemma Files
• 179 - Riveter - short story by Sean Eads
• 193 - A Shallow Grave of Orange Peel and Eggshells - short story by Thoraiya Dyer
• 203 - Alraune - short story by Orrin Grey
• 211 - Preserving the Integrity of the Feminine Mystique - short story by Christine Morgan
• 231 - Hypatia and Her Sisters - short story by Amy Griswold
• 245 - The Lady of the House of Mirrors - short story by Rafaela Ferraz
• 261 - The Ice Weasels of Trebizond - short story by Mr. and Mrs. Brenchley
• 281 - Love in the Time of Markov Processes - short story by Megan Arkenberg

Two sisters, strangers since birth yet bound by family secrets, are caught up in a century-old mystery on an isolated island.

After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she's the heroine of a gothic novel - the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls? But before Blake can discern the novel's ending, she's found dead, murdered in a claw-foot tub. The proprietress of White Hall stands accused.

Summoned by a letter sent from Blake before she died, Thalia Mills returns to the island she swore she'd left for good. She finds that Blake wasn't the first to die at White Hall under suspicious circumstances. Thalia must uncover the real reason for Blake's demise before the forces conspiring to keep Block Island's secrets dead and buried rise up to consume her too.

In this virtuosic debut, a world-class soprano seeks to reclaim her voice from the curse that winds through her family tree.

Lulu can't sing. Since the traumatic birth of her daughter, the internationally renowned soprano hasn't dared utter a note. She's afraid that her body is too fragile and that she may have lost her talent to a long-dreaded curse afflicting all of the mothers in her family.

When Lulu was a child, her strong-willed grandmother Ada filled her head with fables of the family's enchanted history in the Polish countryside. A fantastical lore took hold?an incantatory mix of young love, desperate hope, and one sinister bargain that altered the family's history forever. Since that fateful pact, Ada tells Lulu, each mother in their family has been given a daughter, but each daughter has exacted an essential cost from her mother.

Ada was the first to recognize young Lulu's transcendent talent, spotting it early on in their cramped Chicago apartment, then watching her granddaughter ascend to dizzying heights in packed international concert halls. But as the curse predicted, Lulu's mother, a sultry and elusive jazz singer, disappeared into her bitterness in the face of Lulu's superior talent?before disappearing from her family's life altogether. Now, in the early days of her own daughter's life, Lulu now finds herself weighing her overwhelming love for her child against the burden of her family's past.

In incandescent prose, debut novelist Adrienne Celt skillfully intertwines the sensuous but precise physicality of both motherhood and music. She infuses The Daughters with the spirit of the rusalka, a bewitching figure of Polish mythology that inspired Dvorák's classic opera. The result is a tapestry of secrets, affairs, and unimaginable sacrifices, revealing a family legacy laced with brilliance, tragedy, and most mysterious and seductive of all?the resonant ancestral lore that binds each mother to the one that came before.

Women Science fiction authors - past and present - are united by the problems they face in attempting to write in this genre, an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. Science fiction has been defined by male-centered, scientific discourse that describes women as alien "others" rather than rational beings. This perspective has defined the boundaries of science fiction, resulting in women writers being excluded as equal participants in the genre. Frankenstein's Daughters explores the different strategies women have used to negotiate the minefields of their chosen career: they have created a unique utopian science formulated by and for women, with women characters taking center stage and actively confronting oppressors. This type of depiction is a radical departure from the condition where women are relegated to marginal roles within the narratives.

Melissa Goodrich's debut short story collection, Daughters of Monsters, is a raw and magical book of spells, an honest yet harrowing look at the wonder and threat of the world. In these 17 short stories, a toxic cloud sweeps west to east across the country, devouring all in its path. Past versions of a man show up at the birthday party he's thrown himself. A lonely trucker delivers two-headed angels as part of a money-making scheme. And, in the title story, a daughter of monsters awaits her coming-of-age. The characters in this collection tempt disintegration as they attempt to become their fuller selves, staring hard into the treacherous fog in their ways.

Deep space penal colony Oubliette, population: scum. Lena "Horror" Horowitz leads the Daughters of Forgotten Light, one of three vicious gangs fighting for survival on Oubliette. Their fragile truce is shaken when a new shipment arrives from Earth carrying a fresh batch of prisoners and supplies to squabble over. But the delivery includes two new surprises: a drone, and a baby. Earth Senator Linda Dolfuse wants evidence of the bloodthirsty gangs to justify the government finally eradicating the wasters dumped on Oubliette. There's only one problem: the baby in the drone's video may be hers.

Short time-travel story by Alice Sola Kim. It originally appeared in Lightspeed, November 2010. The story can also be found in the anthologies Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams and The Time Traveler's Almanac (2014), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Tin House #61, 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales (2014), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, edited by Paula Guran.

Women's contributions to science fiction over the past century have been lasting and important, but critical work in the field has only just begun to explore its full range. Justine Larbalestier has collected 11 key stories -- many of them not easily found, and all of them powerful and provocative -- and sets them alongside 11 new essays, written by top scholars and critics, that explore the stories' contexts, meanings, and theoretical implications. The resulting dialogue is one of enormous significance to critical scholarship in science fiction, and to understanding the role of feminism in its development. Organized chronologically, this anthology creates a new canon of feminist science fiction and examines the theory that addresses it. Daughters of Earth is an ideal overview for students and general readers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century) - essay by Justine Larbalestier
• The Fate of the Poseidonia - (1927) - shortstory by Clare Winger Harris
• Illicit Reproduction: Clare Winger Harris's "The Fate of the Poseidonia" - essay by Jane L. Donawerth [as by Jane Donawerth]
• The Conquest of Gola - (1931) - shortstory by Leslie F. Stone
• The Conquest of Gernsback: Leslie F. Stone and the Subversion of Science Fiction Troupes - essay by Brian Attebery
• Created He Them - (1955) - shortstory by Alice Eleanor Jones
• From Ladies' Home Journal to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: 1950s SF, the Offbeat Romance Story, and the Case of Alice Eleanor Jones - essay by Lisa Yaszek
• No Light in the Window - (1963) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Cold War Masculinity In the Early Work of Kate Wilhelm - essay by Josh Lukin
• The Heat Death of the Universe - (1967) - shortstory by Pamela Zoline
• A Space of Her Own: Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" - essay by Mary E. Papke
• And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - (1972) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• (Re)reading James Tiptree Jr.'s "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill Side" - essay by Wendy Pearson
• Wives - (1979) - shortstory by Lisa Tuttle
• The Universal Wife: Exploring 1970s Feminism with Lisa Tuttle's "Wives" - essay by Cathy Hawkins
• Rachel in Love - (1987) - novelette by Pat Murphy
• Simians, Cyborgs, and Women in "Rachel in Love" - essay by Joan Haran
• The Evening and the Morning and the Night - (1987) - novelette by Octavia E. Butler
• Octavia Butler -- Praise Song to a Prophetic Artist - (2006) - essay by Andrea Hairston
• Balinese Dancer - (1997) - shortstory by Gwyneth Jones
• "Prefutural Tension": Gwyneth Jones's Gradual Apocalypse - essay by Veronica Hollinger
• What I Didn't See - (2002) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Something Rich and Strange: Karen Joy Fowler's "What I Didn't See" - (2006) - essay by L. Timmel Duchamp

Nebula Award nominated novelette.

Two dueling teenage divas vie for top ranking in a sport combining kung fu and figure skating at a vicious cram school for talented but spoiled girls.

The story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear.

If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line, the year that this story begins would be around 1365 BCE. It isn't. If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line it would be only a nation. It's an Empire. If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line it would be known by that name. It's Napata. And if this were the ancient Egypt of our time line then the Gods wouldn't be real. It isn't and--They are!

Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, ten men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers--chosen male descendants of the original ten--are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires.

The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. They have children, who have children, and when they are no longer useful, they take their final draught and die. But in the summer, the younger children reign supreme. With the adults indoors and the pubescent in Fruition, the children live wildly--they fight over food and shelter, free of their fathers' hands and their mothers' despair. And it is at the end of one summer that little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others.

Born leader Janey Solomon steps up to seek the truth. At seventeen years old, Janey is so unwilling to become a woman, she is slowly starving herself to death. Trying urgently now to unravel the mysteries of the island and what lies beyond, before her own demise, she attempts to lead an uprising of the girls that may be their undoing.

GATHER THE DAUGHTERS is a smoldering debut; dark and energetic, compulsively readable, Melamed's novel announces her as an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

If you can hear the call of the water, it's already far too late.

They say Cape Disappointment is haunted. That's why tourists used to flock there in droves. They'd visit the rocky shoreline under the old lighthouse's watchful eye and fish shells from the water as they pretended to spot dark shapes in the surf. Now the tourists are long gone, and when Meredith Strand and her young daughter return to Meredith's childhood home after an acrimonious split from her wife, the Cape seems more haunted by regret than any malevolent force.

But her mother, suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, is convinced the ghost stories are real. Not only is there something in the water, but it's watching them. Waiting for them. Reaching out to Meredith's daughter the way it has to every woman in their line for generations?and if Meredith isn't careful, all three women, bound by blood and heartbreak, will be lost one by one to the ocean's mournful call.

Gene-edited human clans have scattered throughout the galaxy, adapting themselves to environments as severe as the desert and the sea. Atuale, the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, sparked a war by choosing her land-dwelling love and rejecting her place among her people. Now her husband and his clan are dying of a virulent plague, and Atuale's sole hope for finding a cure is to travel off-planet. The one person she can turn to for help is the black-market mercenary known as the World Witch - and Atuale's former lover. Time, politics, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted desires stand between Atuale and the hope for her adopted clan.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton.

Assassin. Protector. Blood sister. A story of our times seen through the lens of the future. A story of love, justice and the difficult nature of truth.

In a world torn asunder, a small corner of Australia is having a chaotic rebirth. Eustace Crane II and his Followers of Nathaniel, the begrudging custodians of a ravaged landscape, are harvesting the genetically modified blood of the captive Daughters of Moab - because the Daughters, unlike the Nathans, have an unnatural abundance of good health.

Assumpta Viali likes her solitude. But her boss, the crotchety Eustace, has other plans for her time and sends her to track an escaped captive, Easter. The hunter and the hunted forge an uneasy alliance, joined by Angus O'Connell, a Nathan with questionable motives. While Assumpta returns to the site of her community, destroyed long ago, Easter realises the perils of her lineage... and Angus finds hope in the most unlikely of places.

Driven by loss, and the search for home in an unpredictable new world, each of them must ultimately decide who to trust, and where they belong.

This Nebula nomited short story originally appaered in the Nightmare special edtiont Queers Destroy Horror in october 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction (2016), edited by A. M. Dellamonica and Steve Berman, Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and The New Voices of Fantasy (2017), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman.

Read the full story for free at Nightmare.

Set wholly in a new world, but inspired by modern Egyptian history, about two young women--Nehal, a spoiled aristocrat used to getting what she wants and Giorgina, a poor bookshop worker used to having nothing--who find they have far more in common, particularly in their struggle for the rights of women and their ability to fight for it with forbidden elemental magic

As a waterweaver, Nehal can move and shape any water to her will, but she's limited by her lack of formal education. She desires nothing more than to attend the newly opened Weaving Academy, take complete control of her powers, and pursue a glorious future on the battlefield with the first all-female military regiment. But her family cannot afford to let her go--crushed under her father's gambling debt, Nehal is forcibly married into a wealthy merchant family. Her new spouse, Nico, is indifferent and distant and in love with another woman, a bookseller named Giorgina.

Giorgina has her own secret, however: she is an earthweaver with dangerously uncontrollable powers. She has no money and no prospects. Her only solace comes from her activities with the Daughters of Izdihar, a radical women's rights group at the forefront of a movement with a simple goal: to attain recognition for women to have a say in their own lives. They live very different lives and come from very different means, yet Nehal and Giorgina have more in common than they think. The cause--and Nico--brings them into each other's orbit, drawn in by the group's enigmatic leader, Malak Mamdouh, and the urge to do what is right.

But their problems may seem small in the broader context of their world, as tensions are rising with a neighboring nation that desires an end to weaving and weavers. As Nehal and Giorgina fight for their rights, the threat of war looms in the background, and the two women find themselves struggling to earn--and keep--a lasting freedom.

Enter the fray in this luminous new adventure set during the war-torn, goblin-infested years just before The Blacktongue Thief.

The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men. They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war. Now, our daughters take up arms.

Galva, Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill - has defied her family's wishes and joined the army's untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted - not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.

Late in the 22nd century, the settling of a new world falls on the strong shoulders of young Megan. The perfect leader, she undertakes to guide her sisters to a new planet, free from the shackles of the brutal Earth regime. Negotiating politics in a society of women is second only to securing their safety. When a landing party of men and women discover their colony Megan must decide if the outsiders will live or die. And that includes Lt. Laurel Meredith, whose disturbing beauty is as dangerous to Megan as her people are to Megan's world.

The lesbian science-fiction classic Daughters of a Coral Dawn told the story of a group of pioneering women who disappeared from Earth and colonized the planet Maternas. But what of their sisters left behind? In the highly anticipated sequel, Katherine Forrest tells the story of a group of women called the Unity, who have vanished from society but are still living on earth. But Earth, repressive before the most accomplished and in-dispensable women disappeared, is now a hellish place ruled by the dictator Theo Zedera, known as Zed, and he is seeking the vanished women with ruthless determination. Among them is Africa Contrera, and as she struggles to build a world safe for women, she is haunted by her past, a past in which she and Zed were close friends, a past where she trusted him and shared the deadly knowledge he now uses to hunt her. Is there hope for this new hidden society of women? However resourceful they may be, can they withstand the savagery of a man who uses their own secrets against them? Just as she did 18 years ago, Katherine Forrest has created a brilliant and breathtaking saga of a divided society and the rebels courageous enough to withstand this brutal new world.

Late in the twenty-second century, 4,000 women escape the tyranny of a male-dominated Earth and colonize the planet of Maternas. Katherine V. Forrest's influential 1984 novel,Daughters of a Coral Dawn, told the story of this exodus. Her 2000 novel, Daughters of an Amber Noon, told the story of the women left behind on Earth. Now she returns to Maternas at last. Fifty years have passed, and the first generation born on Maternas has reached maturity. But their vision of a perfect world is very different from the vision of the founders of the Maternas colony.

Who was Darkchild, and for what purpose had he come to the valley?

Kira was a barhona's daughter destined to wield the power of the sun over her peaceful people. Her way was hard, but she knew her heritage and her future...

Then, in the dead of winter, a ship brought Darkchild. He was not of her race, he had no memory. How could he pose a threat to her people that the Arnimi assured her he did? Was Darkchild all that he seemed?

Keva leaves the safety of her home in order to set off on a quest to discover the meaning of the strange dreams which haunt her.

Reyna, a princess, and the hunter Juaren share a dream that sets them in conflict with a greedy enemy who seeks their very souls.

From the age of two, Sir John Averill had lived in the sea, where kindly dolphins raised him to manhood.

Known to a few humans as Triton, the dolphin man could never become fully accustomed to living on land and fled away to his underwater home whenever the need impelled him.

But here he could not live either, For now that he had known man and the ways of man he needed more than the companionship of dolphins.

Now as las there were two creatures like himself--if only he could keep them alive long enough to grow up!

The year is 2073. Earth's climate is faltering and her ecosystems are breaking down. Her burgeoning populations now rely on food and energy supplies imported from colony worlds.

A routine exploratory mission to the planet Fiix finds a world at war with itself, continuously devastated by unpredictable weather patterns. When storms and flooding ruin the Terran base camp and destroy their power and communication links, the explorers must discover what's causing the weather's behavior, not just for the sake of science, but to ensure the expedition's success and survival.

This is the omnibus edition of the two books in the Lear's Daughters series (The Wave and the Flame and Reign of Fire).

The planet Fiix has a climate of bizarre extremes which defies conventional scientific explanation. An expedition from Earth, expecting to find a desert planet, instead finds itself marooned in the middle of a savage winter. The local population, the Sawls, are small and apparently primitive creatures; but while Emil Clausen - mineral company representative in search of profits from the planet's lithium deposits - and planetologist Tay Danforth are missing, presumed dead, after being caught in ferocious floods, other scientists start to learn that the Sawl's have a complex and surprisingly advanced culture. In particular, linguist Stavros Ibia begins to identify with the Sawl's and determines to protect their planet from commercial exploitation, and to gain an understanding of their theological and historical roots.

A Terran mining expedition to the planet Fiix is jeopardized by violent weather patterns that the Sawl natives believe are evidence of a battle between the goddesses Valla and Lagri.

Mercedes Lackey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Valdemar series and romantic fantasies like Beauty and the Werewolf and The Fairy Godmother. JAMES MALLORY and Lackey have collaborated on six novels. Now. these New York Times and USA Today bestselling collaborators bring romance to the fore with The House of Four Winds.

The rulers of tiny, impoverished Swansgaard have twelve daughters and one son. While the prince's future is assured, his twelve sisters must find their own fortunes.

Disguising herself as Clarence, a sailor, Princess Clarice intends to work her way to the New World. When the crew rebels, Clarice/Clarence, an expert with rapier and dagger, sides with the handsome navigator, Dominick, and kills the cruel captain.

Dominick leads the now-outlawed crew in search of treasure in the secret pirate haven known as The House of Four Winds. They encounter the sorceress Shamal, who claims Dominick for her own--but Clarice has fallen hard for Dominick and won't give him up without a fight.

Full of swashbuckling adventure, buoyant magic, and irrepressible charm, The House of the Four Winds is a lighthearted fantasy romp by a pair of bestselling writers.

Strong-willed Naala grows up seeking adventure in her quiet and small village. While the more reserved Sinai resides in the cold and political palace of Nri. Though miles apart, both girls share an indestructible bond: they share the same blood, the same face, and possess the same unspoken magic, thought to have vanished with the lost gods.

The twin girls were separated at birth, a price paid to ensure their survival from Eze Ochichiri, the man who rules the Kingdom of Nri. Both girls are tested in ways that awaken a mystical, formidable power deep within themselves. Eventually, their paths both lead back to the mighty Eze.

But can they defeat the man who brought the gods themselves to their knees?

It’s been a wild year for Sideways Pike. She formed a coven with the three most popular girls in school, fell for a mysterious stranger, and threw a massive Halloween party with said coven to impress said stranger, only for her to literally rip Sideways’ specter out – a soul-like organ that gives witches the ability to perform magic.

For Madeline, stealing Sideways’ specter was a necessary evil: after her witchfinder ex-boyfriend robbed her of her own, Madeline’s been hellbent on getting it back and exacting vengeance on the whole Chantry family, even if that means hurting another witch in the process. Sideways can have her specter back when Madeline’s done with it. She’ll be fine until then, right?

Except Winter break is looming and specter-less Sideways is feeling rotten. She can’t do magic on her own, parts of her mind are tangled with Madeline’s, and if it weren’t for Mr. Scratch, the inky book devil consensually possessing her, she’d probably be dead. Sideways and her fellow (much merrier) Scapegracers have set up shop as curse crafters for girls in their school who’ve been done wrong by guys, following dead-end trails in pursuit of Madeline where they can. But when Sideways comes up with a reckless plan to get her specter back, she finds the other Scapegracers think it’s too dangerous to proceed.

Well, Sideways is used to going it alone, and she’s desperate. She’s not going to let an ex-crush and six unhinged witchfinders stand between herself and her magic. But she, Mr. Scratch, and her trusty stolen bike are in for a bumpy ride...

The Crescent Empire teeters on the edge of a revolution, and the Five Daughters of the Moon are the ones to determine its future.

Alina, six, fears Gagargi Prataslav and his Great Thinking Machine. The gagargi claims that the machine can predict the future, but at a cost that no one seems to want to know.

Merile, eleven, cares only for her dogs, but she smells that something is afoul with the gagargi. By chance, she learns that the machine devours human souls for fuel, and yet no one believes her claim.

Sibilia, fifteen, has fallen in love for the first time in her life. She couldn't care less about the unrests spreading through the countryside. Or the rumors about the gagargi and his machine.

Elise, sixteen, follows the captain of her heart to orphanages and workhouses. But soon she realizes that the unhappiness amongst her people runs much deeper that anyone could have ever predicted.

And Celestia, twenty-two, who will be the empress one day. Lately, she's been drawn to the gagargi. But which one of them was the first to mention the idea of a coup?

Inspired by the 1917 Russian revolution and the last months of the Romanov sisters, The Five Daughters of the Moon is a beautifully crafted historical fantasy with elements of technology fuelled by evil magic.

Lying in a magic-induced coma, the King of Thyrsland is on the brink of death: if his enemies knew, chaos would reign. In fear for his life and his kingdom, his five daughters set out on a perilous journey to try to save him, their only hope an aunt they have yet to meet, a shadowy practitioner of undermagic who lives on the wild northern borders.

No-one can stand before the fierce tattooed soldier and eldest daughter Bluebell, an army commander who is rumoured to be unkillable, but her sisters, the loyal and mystical Ash, beautiful but unhappily married Rose, pious Willow and uncertain Ivy all have their own secrets to keep from her - the kind of secrets that if revealed could bring disaster down upon not only them, but the entire kingdom.

Waiting in the wings is stepbrother Wylm whose dealings with Bluebell's greatest enemy, Hakon the Raven King, would end Bluebell's dreams of revenge on his mother and propel his own desperate grasp for power.

Daughters of the Storm is a richly drawn historical fantasy full of passion, magic and fire, an intimate epic that traces the lives of five complex women as they pursue a quest upon which the fate of a kingdom - as well as their own destinies - rests.

The prequel novelette, The Crown of Rowan, can be read for free here (registration required).