Cruelly cast out by the new leader of the ancient Clan that adopted her as a child, Ayla leaves those she loves behind and travels alone through a stark, open land filled with dangerous animals but few people, searching for the Others, tall and fair like herself. The short summer gives her little time to look, and when she finds a sheltered valley with a herd of hardy steppe horses, she decides to stay and prepare for the long glacial winter ahead. Living with the Clan has taught Ayla many...

At Crydee, a frontier outpost in the tranquil Kingdom of the Isles, an orphan boy, Pug, is apprenticed to a master magician - and the destinies of two worlds are changed forever. Suddenly the peace of the Kingdom is destroyed as mysterious alien invaders swarm through the land. Pug is swept up into conflict but for him and his warrior friend, Tomas, an Odyssey into the unknown has only just begun. Pug's destiny is to lead him through a rift in the fabric of space and time to the mastery of...

After the spectacular victory at Kortag, Thandor appears safe. Bek and Jez, however, are imprisoned and in grave danger. Forced to fight in the deadly arena where all who face them are enemies, they make plans for their escape... but to escape, they must first survive. Perdimonn, Warder of the Earth Key, also faces a perilous road. The powerful Magician, Selkor, having restored Darkweaver's amulet, is now attempting to gather the Keys of Power. Perdimonn must risk everything to stop...

This is the strange, compelling story of Roger Bacon. Ambitious, impatient, mutinous, Bacon was a man of his times with a vision reaching far beyond even our own day. Subject to the harsh, narrow confines of Church-dominated "science", Bacon dared to venture into the deep waters of theory, risking deadly accusations of heresy and black magic. Against a vividly realised backdrop of thirteenth-century England, Paris and Rome, James Blish wrote an engrossing account of this lonely...