"Essun--once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger--has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever. Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power--and her choices will break the world"--

"Haelewise has always lived under the shadow of her mother, Hedda--a woman who will do anything to keep her daughter protected. For with her strange black eyes and even stranger fainting spells, Haelewise is shunned by her village, and her only solace lies in the stories her mother tells of child-stealing witches, of princes in wolf-skins, of an ancient tower cloaked in mist, where women will find shelter if they are brave enough to seek it. Then,...

Eighteen-year-old Morrigan has always felt like she didn't belong in small-town Oklahoma where she grew up. But on an outing with her friends to the deep, gem-filled Alabaster caves, Morrigan learns the dark truth about her ancestry. A devastating accident transports grief-stricken Morrigan to Partholon and into the keep of the Sidetha, where she is regarded as the Light Bringer, the Goddess Adsagsona's Chosen One.

The Sisters of the Blade, backed by warriors known as the Defenders, have ruled Medalon for two centuries, forbidding pagan worship or belief in any god. The people of Karien, to the north, are fanatic worshipers of a single god, and to the south, fervent belief in the heathen gods prevails. Eighteen-year-old R'shiel has long fought her coldhearted mother's domination, but her half-brother, Tarja, is a colonel in the Defenders. When their mother becomes...

"When her mother incurs the wrath of the magical world after writing a dissertation exposing its reality, Tessa must learn to master her new powers as a sorceress to save her mother--and herself--from a very determined assassin."--

"Returning to Ashok K. Banker's brilliant #ownvoices, epic fantasy world of the Burnt Empire first introduced in Upon a Burning Throne, A Dark Queen Rises features Krushni and Karni, two women on quests to protect the innocent and bring down tyrants"-- Queen Aqreen of Aquila leaves her husband Jarsun and flees across the Red Desert. She is determined to keep her daughter from being used by Jarsun to stake his claim to the Burning Throne of Hastinaga,...