Saturday, December 27, 2008

Tanith Lee - Various Novels

This entry will conclude my display of Tanith Lee books. I realised whilst I was scanning the covers, that all the DAW editions are in fact first editions.

Here's some more for your delectation.

Red As Blood or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer is Tanith Lee's take on traditional fairy tales such as Snow White, Beauty & The Beast, Cinderella etc. It has interior illustrations by the lady herself and the cover is the work of Michael Whelan.

lee_redasblood

Companions On The Road contains two novellas, the title story and The Winter Players. It's a Bantam paperback edition where the cover artist is not credited. Days Of Grass is a science fiction novel about alien invasion. Cover art by Michael Whelan.

lee_companions lee_daysofgrass

Next Day By Night, a science fiction novel, and Sung In Shadow a version of Romeo & Juliet. Cover art by Don Maitz and Victoria Poyser.

tanith_lee_day_by_night lee_sunginmshadow

Back to swords and sorcery with the next two books - Cyrion and Volkhavaar.
Cover art is respectively by Ken W Kelly and Michael Whelan.

lee_cyrion lee_volkhavaar

Finally, a werewolf novel Lycanthia or The Children of Wolves, cover art by Paul Chadwick and The Blood Of Roses, a British paperback published by Arrow Books in 1991. The cover artist is Jeff Willis.

lee_lycanthia lee_bloodofroses

That's it for Tanith Lee. Next - Andre Norton's Witch World books.

Tanith Lee - Flat Earth & Other Tales

Continuing with my Tanith Lee collection, here are covers from three of the Flat Earth series. I seem to be missing Death's Master, but I have the others, Night's Master, Delusion's Master and Delirium's Mistress.

tanith_lee_nights master
Cover art by George Barr

tanith_lee_delusions master tanith_lee_deliriums mistress

Cover art respectively by Ken W Kelly and Michael Whelan

The following two books in the Secret Books of Paradys series are British paperback editions published by Unwin in 1989. Cover art is by Peter Goodfellow.

lee_paradys1 lee_paradys2


Back to DAW paperback originals, here is the highly regarded Kill The Dead with a terrific cover by Don Maitz.

tanith_lee_kill the dead
And to finish off this particular post two individual novels, Sabella or The Bloodstone, a Science Fiction Vampire novel and The Silver Metal Lover, the tale of a human girl's affair with a beautiful robot. Cover art is by George Smith (Sabella) and Don Maitz.

tanith_lee_sabella lee_silvermetallover

And yes, there's more Tanith Lee to come - I did say I have a large collection of her books.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Tanith Lee - The Early Books

In times past I was a great fan of Tanith Lee's heroic fantasy books. She is remarkably prolific, producing something like 20 novels in the 1970s alone.

She first came to my notice in 1975 when DAW released her first adult fantasy novel The Birthgrave as a DAW original paperback. I had never before read anything quite like her fantasy, so became addicted to her novels thereafter. As you will see I did collect a great many of her books, though ceased to do so in the late 1980s.

So first up The Birthgrave and its sequels Vazkor, Son of Vazkor and Quest For The White Witch. I recently reread this sequence just to see how they appealed to me today. I decided they were a fun read, definitely not boring and certainly didn't throw them down in disgust. The covers these days look quite exotic with the muscular savage looking men and provocative busty women.

tanith_lee_birthgrave

Cover art by George Barr

tanith_lee_vazkor tanith_lee_witch

Cover art by Gino D'Achille

Next, The Storm Lord and its related novel, Anakire.

tanith_lee_stormlord tanith_lee_anakire

Cover art respectively is by Gino D'Achille and Michael Whelan.

The next two early Tanith Lee books are her dystopian Four Bee novels. These two books of hers are the only ones I regularly reread. I recently reviewed them on my other blog Cat Politics.

The cover art of Don't Bite The Sun is by Brian Froud and Don Maitz did the artwork for Drinking Sapphire Wine.

lee_sun lee_wine

More Tanith Lee will follow soon.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Heroic Fantasy - Swords and Sorcery 2

Below are all the editions of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser paperbacks I have in my library.

Cover art for the Ace editions are by Jeff Jones. The last book in the series The Knight & Knave of Swords cover artist is Darrell Sweet. the Mayflower edition has no credit for the cover artist.

leiber_fafhrd_graymouser1 leiber_fafhrd_graymouser2
leiber_fafhrd_graymouser3 leiber_fafhrd_graymouser4
leiber_fafhrd_graymouser5 leiber_fafhrd_graymouser6

Next - Tanith Lee

Heroic Fantasy - Swords & Sorcery

The following covers are from various heroic fantasy novels or collections, mostly paperback originals published by Ace, DAW and Dell. The Flashing Swords II cover is surely by Frank Frazetta, though it is not acknowledged in the publishing credits, nor is the artist of the second collection Heroic Visions. The latter book I'm pretty sure I purchased because it had a new Fafhrd & Gray Mouser novella called "The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars". I loved the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series by Fritz Leiber - swords and sorcery fiction with class, humour and panache. I will be displaying the covers in the next entry.

flashing_swords2 heroic_visions

Next are some feminist heroic fantasy collections, Amazons I & II edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Cover Art by Michael Whelan.

amazons1 amazons2

Another collection with a somewhat absurd cover...

heroic_fantasy

Next - more heroic fantasy - novels by Fritz Leiber & Tanith Lee.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Fantasy Short Story Collections

For some reason or another I have quite a few short story collections, the first of these being those entitled Fantastic Imagination books 1 and 2 edited by Robert H Boyer & Kenneth J Zahorski.

fantastic_imagination1 fantastic_imagination2

Then there are two others edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold, illustrated by Terri Windling.

elsewhere1 elsewhere2


Next is The Phoenix Tree and Visions Of Wonder, both edited by Robert H Boyer & Kenneth J Zahorski.

phoenix_tree visions


Finally, Basilisk , a collection edited by Ellen Kushner with illustrations by Terri Windling and Hecate's Cauldron, stories about witches edited by Susan M Shwartz with cover art by Michael Whelan.

basilisk hecates_cauldron

Next - Heroic Fantasy, Swords & Sorcery etc.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Fantasy - James Branch Cabell & Oddities

I realise I've been dreadfully remiss in posting new items on this blog, but I've finally got a bit time to scan book covers, so here is more bookish eye candy for your delectation.

The long promised covers from James Branch Cabell paperbacks...

James Branch Cabell was an American writer famous for his witty satiric fantasies.

I have a small collection of his books, some of which I've already displayed in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy posts.

Here are several others, mostly published by Del Ray in the 1970's:

cabell_figures cabell_domnei
cabell_eve cabell_silverstallion

Also included in this post are several unusual chapbooks. also collected in the 1970s.

First there is Ursula Le Guin's From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, an essay on modern fantasy.

leguin_elfland

Peter Beagle's Lila The Werewolf

beagle_lila

And finally, a facsimile edition of Christina Rosetti's strange poem, Goblin Market, illustrated by Laurence Housman and published by Green Tiger Press in 1973

goblin_market2 goblin_market1
Decorative envelopeThe book
housman_goblins

Next - fantasy collections