Close
post-featured-image

$2.99 eBook Sale: June 2021

Summer is approaching and you know what that means. That’s right, SUMMER SALES! Check out what books you can grab for the entire month of June here.

Image Place holder  of - 90Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

kindlea nooka ebooksa google playa ibooks2 39 koboa

Poster Placeholder of - 17Panacea by F. Paul Wilson

Medical examiner Laura Fanning has two charred corpses and no answers. Both bear a mysterious tattoo but exhibit no known cause of death. Their only connection to one another is a string of puzzling miracle cures. Her preliminary investigation points to a cult in the possession of the fabled panacea—the substance that can cure all ills—but that’s impossible….

kindleb nookb ebooksb google playb ibooks2 36 kobob

Image Placeholder of - 94Skullsword by Brian Staveley

Pyrre Lakatur is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer—she is a priestess. At least, she will be once she passes her final trial. The problem isn’t the killing. The problem, rather, is love. For to complete her trial, Pyrre has ten days to kill the seven people enumerated in an ancient song, including “the one who made your mind and body sing with love / who will not come again.” Pyrre isn’t sure she’s ever been in love. And if she fails to find someone who can draw such passion from her, or fails to kill that someone, her order will give her to their god, the God of Death. Pyrre’s not afraid to die, but she hates to fail, and so, as her trial is set to begin, she returns to the city of her birth in the hope of finding love . . . and ending it on the edge of her sword.

kindlec nookc ebooksc google playc koboc

Place holder  of - 13Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire edited by George R. R. Martin, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass

Aboard his grandfather’s spaceship and fleeing the violent turmoil between jokers, aces, and nats that his vicious ambition spawned, Blaise is headed for a new conquest: the planet Takis. Dr. Tachyon is left behind… but he’s lost more than his only way of returning to his homeworld. Blaise has stolen his body, as well—leaving Tach trapped in the pregnant body of a teenage runaway.

kindle nook ebooks Image Place holder  of google play- 95 kobo

Tor Books Announces Programming for Phoenix Comic-Con 2014

Placeholder of  -61

Once again Tor (Booth# 646) continues our wildly popular *in-booth signings and giveaways, offering you a chance to meet your favorite authors up close and personal and pick up free books.

Friday, June 6th

Saturday, June 7th

  • 2:00 pm Tor Booth (#646) Signing: John Scalzi, Lock In
  • 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Creating Your Fantasy World
    Peter Orullian
  • 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Microsoft XBox Panel
    Peter Orullian

Sunday, June 8th

  • 12:00 pm Tor Booth (#646) Signing: Cathrynne Valente, Deathless
  • 2:00 pm Tor Booth (#646) Signing: Melanie Rawn, Touchstone

Make sure to follow @Torbooks on Twitter for up to date information and last minute events!

All Tor Booth signings are on a first come first serve basis and while supplies lasts. Limit one book per person.

Spring Cleaning Sweepstakes

Our bookshelves are a little overcrowded right

Our bookshelves are a little overcrowded right now and we need to make room for new books arriving soon. So, we thought we’d make room by offering up books and more to you! You can win one of the two collections pictured below. Enter by commenting and letting us know which collection you’d like to win most:

COLLECTION #1:

Poster Placeholder of - 22

Collection #1 includes: A Memory of Light backpack filled with The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, Redshirts by John Scalzi, The Sunless Countries by Karl Schroeder, Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber, A Memory of Light iPhone case, 1 Wheel of Time hookmark, and a Makers tile card game.

COLLECTION #2:

Place holder  of - 58

Collection #2 includes: A Memory of Light backpack filled with Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts, Among Others by Jo Walton, The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe, In a Fix by Linda Grimes, The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, A Memory of Light iPhone case, 1 Wheel of Time hookmark, and a Makers tile card game.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins March 4, 2013 at 9:00 a.m. ET. and ends March 8, 2013 12:00 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

post-featured-image

Russian Myth and Folklore

Image Placeholder of - 60By Catherynne M. Valente

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.

Deathless is that kind of fairy tale.

In Russian fairy tales, the narrative flows a little differently. In those stories, you won’t find a tale for Cinderella, one for Snow White, one for Rapunzel. Instead, a peculiar cast of characters recurs over and over, in nearly every story, performing different acts and suffering different sorrows, but remaining the same. Ivan the Fool. Yelena the Bright. Baba Yaga. Vasilisa the Brave. Koschei the Deathless.

Ivan is always the youngest of three sons. Baba Yaga sometimes helps and sometimes harms, but her house on chicken legs always makes a grand entrance. Koschei always hides his death in the eye of a needle, inside an egg, inside a chicken, inside a cat, inside a hound, inside a horse, and so on. Like a soap opera, these characters play out a hundred different dramas. Some of them are known in the West—for instance, Baba Yaga made the transition to popular mythology. Some, like Koschei, are almost completely unknown—though I note with a little smile how infatuated our culture seems to be with a certain twilit archetype, the kind of man who steals young girls away, who drinks blood but can still come out in the daylight, deathless and dangerous but still oh so seduced by human women.

And then there’s Marya Morevna, who appears just once, in one grand story, and no more. She is a warrior, the queen from beyond the sea, not just beautiful or clever like the princesses of the other tales, but a queen, with terrible power–power enough to keep Koschei the Deathless chained up in her basement for the always-unfortunate Ivan to find. The sly tale offers no explanation for the contents of Marya’s cellar. She opens the story by killing a vast field of soldiers, and the reason for that is also left mysterious. She is a female Bluebeard, with a moral standing somewhere between Snow White and Snow White’s stepmother.

Deathless is her book.

This is a story that lives in the gaps of the original–why does Marya Morevna kill, what does she want, how did the very devil come to be chained against her basement wall? Alongside these answers lies the long dark fairy tale of the Russian Revolution, World War II, and the siege of Leningrad. Magic and politics have been bedfellows for a long time, you see. Once, it was the only way to write about oppression without incurring official wrath. Stalin didn’t do that terrible thing–Baba Yaga did. It’s just a story, you know. Russia has a long tradition of tucking true stories of blood and pain into fairy tales, closing them away for safekeeping in the eye of a needle, in the center of an egg. Though I will not suffer for the tales I tell as some brave authors did, Deathless is part of that tradition, and I have tried to give it all the respect and love I have.

The trials change.

The tale stays the same.

Deathless (978-0-7653-2630-0 / $24.99) by Catherynne M. Valente became available from Tor Books in March.

…………………………

From the Tor/Forge April newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

post-featured-image

Book Trailer: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

object

About DEATHLESS: Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

Releasing March 29, 2011.

The owner of this website has made a commitment to accessibility and inclusion, please report any problems that you encounter using the contact form on this website. This site uses the WP ADA Compliance Check plugin to enhance accessibility.