Showing results by author "Judith Tarr"

In ancient Egypt, a woman might be king - but the price she paid would bind her soul for eternity. Hatshepsut, the Great Royal Wife, is bound in marriage to her brother, Thutmose, whom she despises. When the king dies while his son is yet a child, Hatshepsut raises herself from queen regent to ruling king. And all the while, the royal heir, the son of the concubine, watches and waits.

The life and times of Melisende, the crusader queen of Jerusalem, regent to her young son, the king, during the 12th century, come to life through the eyes of Lady Richildis, a young Frankish woman on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, who becomes one of Melisende's confidantes.

Alexander the Great ruled the greatest Empire of the ancient world, but he was ruled by his mother, called Olympias. There are as many legends about this powerful Queen as there are of her famous son, and the stories began long before she even met Philip of Macedon. Priestess of the Great Goddess, daughter of ruling house of Epiros, witch, and familiar of Serpents... she was a figure of mystery, fascination, and fear even during her own lifetime.

In the grandfathers' time, when few yet living had been born, the People worshipped the horse, and served him, and took the gifts that he gave them: his meat, his hide, the milk of his mares. But he had not yet granted to men the greatest gift of all: the gift of riding on his back, and racing the wind. Sparrow is a shaman's daughter in a tribe that forbids women to be kings, to be shamans, to be anything but silent and tractable servants to the all-powerful men.

Egypt's long history has no more mysterious reign than that of Akhenaton, disciple of the One God, the Aten. Akhenaton abolished the worship of all other gods in Egypt and built a city devoted to the Aten, ruling for a decade of increasing civil unrest. Without a son of his own, he was forced to accept his brother, Smenkhkare, as co-pharaoh. The story unfolds through the eyes of Nofret, a slave girl, who comes to know more of the king and of his city than most.

A wild, spoiled princeling of the house of Han-Gilen, Indaros Karelios is handsome, arrogant, a seducer and tavern-crawler with little regard for the noble line that spawned him. But Daros is also a mage, unruly, untrained, and unbound by the constraints that block other workers of magic. Caught violating the mages' gravest prohibition, crossing through the forbidden gates between the worlds, Daros is brought to judgment before the Lady Merian, ruler of the Golden Empire, Mistress of the Gates, and heir of Avaryan.

The war between the Golden Empire and the Empire of the Sun is over; the empires merged into one, and there is one emperor over them all: Estarion, heir to both royal houses. But Estarion will not accept half of his heritage, nor will the Golden Empire willingly accept him. The same forces that assassinated his father are arrayed against him, led by the last scion of an ancient imperial line--and he must stand against them and truly unite the empires or see all the great work of his ancestors reduced to rubble.

The emperor Estarion's long reign has finally brought peace and even reconciliation to the two warring halves of his empire. But no sun lord can rest content in his triumph. Now Estarion and Vanyi, his master of mages, have the leisure to explore the rest of their wide world. Vanyi's Mage Guild has created a series of gates that can take a traveler halfway around their planet in only a few steps.

This is the delightfully intimate story of the tenth-century Byzantine princess, Theophano, wife of Otto II, the Holy Roman Emperor. When her husband was killed in battle, Theophano became Regent for her infant son, Otto III, and ruled the Holy Roman Empire for a decade. The novel's rousing climax is one of the great Dark Ages wars of succession, when Theophano's son became a pawn in the hands of the Frankish king.

Kidnapped, tortured, betrayed by his brothers whom he loved, the heir of the Golden Empire has lost everything but his life. His only hope is a chance encounter, a wandering priest from the Empire of the Sun. But the priest is more than he seems, and the prince is stronger than he knew; and war is coming. Two empires hang in the balance. Two emperors will fall, unless the prince and his unwelcome ally find a way to make peace. But peace comes at a price; and that price may be too high for either to pay.

Elian of Han-Gilen is the pride and scandal of her father's princedom. She has out-ridden, out-hunted, and out-shot every suitor. Now comes one whom she could bring herself to love: No lesser man than the throne prince of the Golden Empire. But Elian swore an oath as a child to a foster brother who is now a warrior king. Consort to an imperial heir or squire at arms to a conqueror: Elian must choose, and in choosing, decide the fate of two empires.

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, heir to the throne won by Alexander the Great: she was the most powerful woman of the ancient Mediterranean, and the only person standing between Rome and its dominion over the world. She was wife to Julius Caesar, and bore his only son. After his death she took Mark Antony, Caesar's greatest general, as lover and consort, and as her partner in a vast political enterprise. Together they strove to unite Egypt and Rome under one throne.

The king's heir of Ianon is long lost, vanished into the south. Her father refuses to name his son heir in her place, though that son is a mighty warrior. Then one day a young wanderer arrives with news that both breaks and heals the king's heart: His heir is dead, but before she died, she gave birth to a son. That child, now grown, has come to take her place. But the king's son will not surrender his hope of kingship to a boy without a father, though he claims to be the son of a god.

Book View Cafe celebrates its fifth anniversary with an anthology of our favorite stories. From the fantasy and science fiction of our roots to steampunk, romance, historical and mainstream; from humor to life's hardest challenges, across the spectrum from light to dark.

In the dawn of time, women ruled, and the people had no word for war. Then the horsemen came. Sarama is the last of the White Mare's servants, descended from an ancient line conquered long ago by warrior tribes. Her father is the king of one such tribe. Her twin brother Agni is the king's heir. But she is heir to an older world, and a different way.

Alfred of St. Ruan's has lived his life in the seclusion of the monastery. But a badly wounded knight on a mission from the Elvenking, a beautiful and mysterious stranger who walks as both woman and beast, and a warrior king call him out of the cloister's walls into the wars and storms of the world. For he is neither mortal nor human, though he has long tried to live as both; and he can deny neither his nature nor his powerful magic.

A knight from across the sea, a beleaguered kingdom, a spirit of fire with a deadly secret - Judith Tarr's beloved novel of grand romance and high magic in the age of the Crusades appears for the first time in digital form. Join Prince Aidan, son of a mortal king and an immortal enchantress, and the deathless Assassin Morgiana, in a saga of war and truce, betrayal and honor, hate and love.

In this long-awaited and much-requested book based on her "Horseblog" at Book View Caf, author and horse breeder Judith Tarr answers these questions and many more. She looks at horses from the perspective of the writer whose book or story needs them as anything from basic transport to major plot device, and provides definitions, explanations, and links and references for further research - leavened with insight into the world of the horse and the humans who both use and serve him. Here is a guide to the fine art of getting it right.

For a long, brutal century, the Kingdom of Lower Egypt has been occupied by the "Vile Asiatics", the conquerors called the Shepherd Kings. With their horses and chariots, they overwhelmed the armies of Egypt and swept over the Delta and the sacred cities. Iry, daughter of an old noble house, the Sun Ascendant, has been enslaved by the bearded conquerors. But her new master is born of a different blood, son of the priestess of an ancient rite, the cult of the Horse Goddess and her avatar, the White Mare.

Nine tales of magic and enchantment. Horses of the ancient world, horses of the Middle Ages and the Arabian Nights, horses of the present and the future, even horses (and not quite horses) of a world that never was. When a mysterious stranger steals the Emperor Charlemagne’s favorite horse, the Emperor’s page goes hunting for the thief and the horse - and uncovers a secret older than gods.