James Farrell

THE WAR IS OVER.Or so it would seem. The President has been assasinated and a former agent with superpowers, Ghost, has made himself King of America. But he inherits the feud with the Prophet's men, now encamped in a new country they carved out for themselves named Mutopia, and lays them seige, kidnapping nearly a dozen small children with superpowers they were sheltering.Escaping, the children lift the seige.But then King Ghost's most trusted and powerful super, the demonic Witch-Lord, rebels against him, by using the youngest and most powerful of the House of Fayblood, the Stingray, to steal everyone's powers. He sets out, not to rule the world, but to destroy it.

The Ancient Evil conquered the Three Realms, encasing Fairyland in eternal winter.That was 500 years ago.The denizens of Fairyland survive, packed into the huge sprawling towers of the Cidatel, the great fairy-fortress that thrusts eight thousand-foot towers up from the middle of Fairyland, so well defended by its' two Guardians that even a Greater Evil cannot breach it.Varn, a human refugeee from the rabbit-like remnants of people lurking in the winter land, knows no other life than the enchanted yet routine existence of the Cidatel. But when the magic-beanstalk elevators sprout magic beans, he and several companions consume them, and gain powers, even as the protection is breached and Grey Terrors appear inside the very citadel itself.

THE MEDALLIONS OF THE SEASONS BOOK 2Last year, John Frost, a teenage homeschooler and paperboy but also a Winter-lover, wished it would always be winter. This called down the Icelord, who had to be defeated by John and his friends.This year, Rebecca is given a Medallion of Summer, a mysterious and ancient relic entrusted to men. While wearing it she accidentally wishes it would always be summer. At once heat waves sweep the earth; and they show no sign of relenting. It is Endless Summer.In the Room of the Books, which turns out to be a chamber of the Library where all that is subcreated is stored, they learn that 24 Medallions of the Seasons were crafted by the Seasons' Lords to govern them: and that the Seven of Winter were stolen by the Lord of Winter, and the others scattered. Only by finding and restoring them can the Endless Summer be ended. Except there is one danger, especially to Rebecca. If she holds the Three of Summer, she will be consumed with greed, with fury, with passion, with, in short, Summer itself: she will becomeTHE SUMMERWITCH.

One thousand years ago, the world ended.The Ancients covered the earth, a global civilization of such fascinating complexity as to defy imagination. Then the ancient fay-people, the Gardun-Houldu, returned, and with them the Heir of their Rings, who unleashed the Wrath of Eldarendar. And of all that civilization, eight cities alone remained.Now it is 3030 AD, and mankind has grown technological once again, learning to walk amid the stars, and Eldarendar tolerates this as long as it stays in the cities. But in the stars, they are beyond his reach, and he is worried, and the Pope is worried as well. What do the Mutopians do, when they walk among the stars? What horrors are they committing, beyond reach of God and man?Where pontiffs and magic Rings fail, professors may succeed. No one would ever suspect a flabby professor of philosophy to be the spy of Peter and of Eldarendar. Juldivere Osbaldistone finds many strange things in Mutopia, not least a secret society of warrior monks with their own space program, the refounded Order of the Temple of Solomon. Or as we know them, Knights Templars. In their flagship, the professor of philosophy penetrates the horrors of the stars, and finds there secrets he wishes he had not.

On the grim drought-withered mountains above Meriden CT, in the year 1999, Michael met the abyss. A writer was scribbling in a notebook, a look of fascination and terror in his face. "Gotta write. Twister likes this sort of place. Twister wants to be born." Michael tears it out of his hand and throws it over the cliff. But a book must be destroyed if it is to be prevented. Now a movie is being filmed from that script, a movie about a character named Twister, who is not merely demented, but evil itself. And the actors who portray him, all go mad....as if they were becoming Twister himself. Caught up in a game increasingly mad, in which the stakes are the very souls of the people involved, Michael realizes there is no way to win except to remain untwisted.

This is the fourth in the Mythologies Reforged series. The previous books are "The Ballad of the Grey Prophet", dealing with Ireland; "Vainamoin's Kalevala" dealing with Finland; "The Death of Arthur" which includes both Arthurian and Norse retellings, and finally the GLOOSAPPO. Lost for nearly two hundred years and preserved only fragmentarily in a collection of legends gathered by Charles Leland, the ancient mythology of the Algonquins is a bedrock of vivid and powerful tales. Now Farrell has reforged them into a veritable Edda of New England, in which the greatest of the Native American mythologies can at last be glimpsed in something approaching its' original majesty. Called the GLOOSKAPPO because of its' focus upon the weird, faylike, magnificent being who dominates the haunted country around the White Mountains, it is arranged in a series of songs and poems, gathered into five cycles, and includes as well the first known poetry of the Gardun-Houldu from the "Eldarendar" series. It takes place within the context of the last three books of the ARHELED series, "World's End", being in fact the mysterious book kept by Larry Fay in the old church in Vermont.