“[Bujold’s] work remains among the most enjoyable and rewarding in contemporary fiction.” —Publishers Weekly, praise for the author
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- The Assassins of Thasalon
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/27/21
Formats: Digital Audy
An unholy attack upon his brother-in-law General Arisaydia pitches sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona headlong into the snake pit of Cedonian imperial politics. But they will not travel alone. The mission from his god brings Penric some of his strangest new allies yet, and the return of some of his most valued old ones.
This novel-length story takes place two years after the events of The Physicians of Vilnoc.- The Assassins of Thasalon
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/27/21
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Masquerade in Lodi
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/23/21
Formats: Digital Audy
Bastard’s Eve is a night of celebration for most residents in the canal city of Lodi—but not for sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona, who find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.
This novella falls between “Penric’s Fox” and “Penric’s Mission” in the internal chronology of the Penric & Desdemona tales.
- Masquerade in Lodi
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/23/21
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Physicians of Vilnoc
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 8/11/20
Formats: Digital Audy
When a mysterious plague breaks out in the army fort guarding Vilnoc, the port capital of the duchy of Orbas, Temple sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona are called upon by General Arisaydia to resurrect Penric’s medical skills and solve its lethal riddle. In the grueling days that follow, Pen will find that even his magic is not enough to meet the challenges without help from dedicated new colleagues—and the god of mischance.
- The Physicians of Vilnoc
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 8/11/20
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Orphans of Raspay
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/14/20
Formats: Digital Audy
When the ship in which they are traveling is captured by Carpagamon island raiders, Temple sorcerer Penric and his resident demon Desdemona find their life complicated by two young orphans, Lencia and Seuka Corva, far from home and searching for their missing father. Pen and Des will need all their combined talents of mind and magic to unravel the mysteries of the sisters and escape from the pirate stronghold.
- The Orphans of Raspay
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/14/20
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Spirit Ring
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/16/19
Formats: Digital Audy
In an alternate Renaissance Italy where the church regulates magic and licenses magicians, fiery Fiametta Beneforte wants to be more than her goldsmith-mage father’s unpaid apprentice. But when the Duchy of Montefoglia is laid under military and magical siege, she unexpectedly must join with Thur Ochs, a young Swiss miner and foundryman, to tap their skills in both metalwork and necromancy to rescue her father’s soul and combat an evil sorcerer.
- The Spirit Ring
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/16/19
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Knife Children
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Read by Tim Campbell
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Release Date: 6/25/19
Formats: Digital Audy
Lakewalker Barr Foxbrush returns from two years of patrolling the bitter wilds of Luthlia against the enigmatic, destructive entities called malices, only to find that the secret daughter he’d left behind in the hinterland of Oleana has disappeared from her home after a terrible accusation. The search for her will call on more of Barr’s mind and heart than just his mage powers, as he tries to balance his mistakes of the past and his most personal duties to the future. A stand-alone story set in the world of the Sharing Knife.
- Knife Children
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Read by Tim Campbell
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Release Date: 6/25/19
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Flowers of Vashnoi
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 10/23/18
Formats: Digital Audy
Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique’s experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.
- The Flowers of Vashnoi
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 10/23/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Prisoner of Limnos
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 3/06/18
Formats: Digital Audy
In this sequel novella to Mira’s Last Dance, Temple sorcerer Penric and the widow Nikys have finally reached safety in the duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys’ mother has been taken hostage by her brother’s enemies at the Cedonian imperial court, and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.
Their own romance still unresolved, Nikys, Penric, and of course Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile country once more, finding along the way that family relationships can be as unexpectedly challenging as any rescue scheme.
- The Prisoner of Limnos
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 3/06/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Penric’s Fox
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/01/18
Formats: Digital Audy
Some eight months after the events of Penric and the Shaman, Learned Penric, sorcerer and scholar, travels to Easthome, the capital of the Weald. There he again meets his friends Shaman Inglis and Locator Oswyl. When the body of a sorceress is found in the woods, Oswyl draws him into another investigation, and they must all work together to uncover a mystery mixing magic, murder, and the strange realities of Temple demons.
- Penric’s Fox
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/01/18
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Mira’s Last Dance
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 6/13/17
Formats: Digital Audy
In this sequel to the novella Penric’s Mission, the injured Penric, a Temple sorcerer and learned divine, tries to guide the betrayed General Arisaydia and his widowed sister Nikys across the last hundred miles of hostile Cedonia to safety in the Duchy of Orbas.
In the town of Sosie, the fugitive party encounters unexpected delays, and even more unexpected opportunities and hazards, as the courtesan Mira of Adria, one of the ten dead women whose imprints make up the personality of the chaos demon Desdemona, comes to the fore with her own special expertise.
- Mira’s Last Dance
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 6/13/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Penric’s Mission
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/07/17
Formats: Digital Audy
In his thirtieth year, Penric fell in love with light …
Learned Penric, a sorcerer and divine of the Bastard’s Order, travels across the sea to sunlit Cedonia on his first covert diplomatic mission, to attempt to secure the services of a disaffected Cedonian general for the Duke of Adria. However, nothing is as it seems: Penric is betrayed and thrown into a dungeon, and worse follows for the general and his kin.
Penric’s narrow escapes and adventures—including his interest in a young widow—are told with Bujold’s remarkable energy, wit, and humor. Once again, Bujold has created unforgettable characters and a wondrous, often dangerous world of intrigue and sorcery.
- Penric’s Mission
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/07/17
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Penric and the Shaman
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 12/06/16
Formats: Digital Audy
In this novella set in the World of the Five Gods and four years after the events in Penric’s Demon, Penric is a divine of the Bastard’s Order as well as a sorcerer and scholar, living in the palace where the Princess-Archdivine holds court. His scholarly work is interrupted when the Archdivine agrees to send Penric, in his role as sorcerer, to accompany a “Locator” of the Father’s Order, assigned to capture Inglis, a runaway shaman charged with the murder of his best friend. However, the situation they discover in the mountains is far more complex than expected. Penric’s roles as sorcerer, strategist, and counselor are all called upon before the end.
Bujold delivers an astonishing tale that is not soon forgotten.
- Penric and the Shaman
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 12/06/16
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/02/16
Formats: Digital Audy
Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan returns to the planet that changed her destiny in a new novel by multiple New York Times bestselling author Lois McMaster Bujold.
Future imperfect
Three years after her famous husband’s death, Cordelia Vorkosigan, widowed Vicereine of Sergyar, stands ready to spin her life in a new direction. Oliver Jole, admiral, Sergyar Fleet, finds himself caught up in her web of plans in ways he’d never imagined, bringing him to an unexpected crossroads in his life.
Meanwhile, Miles Vorkosigan, one of Emperor Gregor’s key investigators, this time dispatches himself on a mission of inquiry, into a mystery he never anticipated—his own mother.
Plans, wills, and expectations collide in this sparkling science fiction social comedy, as the impact of galactic technology on the range of the possible changes all the old rules, and Miles learns that not only is the future not what he expects, neither is the past.
- Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/02/16
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Proto Zoa
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/01/16
Formats: Digital Audy
A delightful collection of Lois McMaster Bujold’s early stories and a comprehensive introduction by this New York Times bestselling author
“Protozoa” is a word from biology via the Greek meaning “first animals.” These short stories were indeed among the first life spontaneously generated in Lois McMaster Bujold’s nascent writing career. Along with an introduction by the author, this collection features the short stories “Barter,” “Garage Sale,” “The Hole Truth,” “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma,” and “Aftermaths.”
- Proto Zoa
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 2/01/16
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Penric’s Demon
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 1/04/16
Formats: Digital Audy
On his way to his betrothal, young Lord Penric comes upon a riding accident with an elderly lady on the ground, her maidservant and guardsmen distraught. As he approaches to help, he discovers that the lady is a Temple divine, servant to the five gods of this world. Her avowed god is the Bastard, “master of all disasters out of season,” and with her dying breath she bequeaths her mysterious powers to Penric. From that moment on, Penric’s life is irreversibly changed, and his life is in danger from those who envy or fear him.
Set in the fantasy world of the author’s acclaimed novels The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt, this novella has the depth of characterization and emotional complexity that distinguishes Bujold’s work.
- Penric’s Demon
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 1/04/16
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Borders of Infinity
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 5/01/10
Formats: Digital Audy
The popular adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, a clever and outlandish science fiction hero for the modern era, continue in these three tales. In “The Mountains of Mourning,” Miles is dispatched to a backcountry region of Barrayar, where he must act as detective, judge, and executioner in a controversial murder case.
In “Labyrinth,” Miles adopts his alternate persona as Dendarii Mercenary Admiral Naismith for an undercover mission to rescue an important research geneticist from Jackson’s Whole.
And in the title story, Miles infiltrates an escape-proof Cetagandan POW camp and plays hero to the most deeply distressed damsel of his colorful career.
- Borders of Infinity
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 5/01/10
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Falling Free
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 9/15/09
Formats: Digital Audy
Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what’s wrong, and move on to the next job. Everything neat and according to spec, just the way he liked it. Safety Regs weren’t just the rule book he swore by; he’d helped write them. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Leo was to teach welding to a secretly produced batch of humanoid workers genetically engineered with two additional arms instead of legs to be ideally suited to working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation? Leo hadn’t anticipated a situation where the right thing to do was neither safe nor in the rules.
Leo adopted a thousand quaddies. Now all he had to do was teach them to be free.
- Falling Free
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 9/15/09
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 4: Horizon
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 7/28/09
Formats: Digital Audy
In a world where malices, remnants of ancient magic, can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets—and themselves—from the farmers they protect. So when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farm girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, marry, and defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the split between their peoples.
As Dag’s abilities have grown, so has his concern about who—or what—he is becoming. At the end of a great river journey, he is offered an apprenticeship to a master groundsetter in a southern Lakewalker camp. But as his understanding of his powers deepens, so does his frustration with the camp’s rigid mores with respect to farmers. At last, he and Fawn decide to travel a very different road—and find that along it, their disparate but hopeful company increases.
Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings—one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: When the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?
- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 4: Horizon
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 7/28/09
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Shards of Honor
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 4/20/09
Formats: Digital Audy
Captain Cordelia Naismith of the Betan Expeditionary Force was on a routine mission to study the life forms on an uninhabited, neutral planet. Little did she know that the enemy Barrayarans had chosen this place as their secret base for an as-yet undeclared war. Separated from her team, Cordelia is captured by Lord Aral Vorkosigan, the leader in charge of the Barrayaran mission. Aral himself is caught in a web of political intrigue that has led to a recent attempt on his life. As the two strangers struggle together across the unfriendly terrain of the foreign planet toward Aral’s ship, they discover that their greatest danger may be the romance inconveniently developing between them, on the brink of a war that will divide their peoples more strongly than ever.
Recognized as the current exemplar of character-based science fiction, Bujold debuts her beloved Vorkosigan saga with this tale about the future parents of Miles Vorkosigan.
- Shards of Honor
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 4/20/09
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Ethan of Athos
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 3/01/09
Formats: Digital Audy
Set in Bujold’s Vorkosigan universe, this independent novel follows a doctor as he braces himself for his first encounter with that most alien of aliens—a female of his own species.
Dr. Ethan Urquhart is chief of biology at a District Reproduction Center. He delivers babies from uterine replicators. You see, on Athos there are no women. In fact, the planet is forbidden to them. Isolated from the galactic community by distance and a lack of exploitable resources, the Athosians have peacefully lived their peculiar social experiment for two hundred years. But now, the ovarian cultures dating back to the original settlement of the planet are giving out. With the future of Athos at stake, Ethan is chosen on behalf of his cloistered fellows for a unique mission: to brave the wider universe in quest of new ovarian tissue cultures to replenish Athos’ dwindling stocks. Along the way, he must tangle with covert operatives, killers, telepathy, interplanetary politics, and—perhaps most disturbingly—an indomitable female mercenary named Elli Quinn.
- Ethan of Athos
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 3/01/09
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Winterfair Gifts
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/01/08
Formats: Digital Audy
This Hugo-nominated novella adds a delightful extra chapter to Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, describing the wedding of Miles and Ekaterin and events leading up to it.
In the festive season of Winterfair on the planet Barrayar, Lord Miles Vorkosigan is making elaborate preparations for his wedding. The long-awaited event stirs up romance and intrigue among his eccentric family and friends, particularly for bioengineered space mercenary Sergeant Taura and shy, diffident Armsman Roic. But Miles also has an enemy who is plotting to turn the romantic ceremony into a festival of death.
Winterfair Gifts offers another of Bujold’s witty, character-centered science fiction plots with a twist of romance.
- Winterfair Gifts
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 7/01/08
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 3: Passage
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 4/22/08
Formats: Digital Audy
Filled with magic, heroism, and all-too-human characters, Bujold’s Sharing Knife saga is both a gripping adventure and a poignant romance. In this third volume, Fawn, the young farm girl, and Dag, the seasoned soldier-sorcerer, set off to find fresh solutions to the perilous split between their peoples and encounter new hazards both human and uncanny.
The farmers and riverfolk have long distrusted the power of the mysterious and aloof Lakewalkers, even though they depend on them for protection from the evil malices. The proud Lakewalkers, meanwhile, have exiled Dag after learning of his marriage to Fawn, the first outsider to be bound to a Lakewalker in their magical way. But as Dag’s natural Lakewalker ability to manipulate “ground energy” begins to develop in dangerous directions, he and Fawn realize that big changes are ahead.
- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 3: Passage
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 4/22/08
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Hallowed Hunt
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Read by Marguerite Gavin
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
Lois McMaster Bujold returns to the vivid, perilous world of her previous masterworks, the Hugo Award–winning Paladin of Souls and Hugo and World Fantasy Award–nominated The Curse of Chalion, with this tale of devotion and strange destiny.
The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile. It falls to Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff to transport the prince to his burial place and to bring the accused killer, Lady Ijada, to judgment. His mission is an ugly and delicate one, for the imminent death of the old Hallow King has placed the crown in play, and the road he travels with his burden and his prisoner is fraught with danger. But in the midst of political chaos, magic has the fiercer hold on Ingrey’s destiny, and Ijada herself may turn out to be the only one he dares trust.
- The Hallowed Hunt
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Read by Marguerite Gavin
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Mirror Dance
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
The dwarfish, fetally damaged yet brilliant Miles Vorkosigan has more than his share of troubles. Having recently escaped an assassination plot whose tool was a brainwashed clone of himself, Miles has set the clone, Mark, free for a new chance at life. But when he decides to let his clone brother assume his secret identity and lead the Dendarii Free Mercenary on an unauthorized mission to liberate other clones from the outlaw planet of Jackson’s Whole, things start to get really messy. The mission goes awry, Miles’ rescue attempt goes even more wrong, and Miles ends up killed and placed in cryogenic suspension for future resuscitation. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the cryo-container is lost! Now it is up to the confused, disturbed Mark to either take Miles’ place as heir of the Vorkosigan line or redeem himself by finding and saving Miles.
- Mirror Dance
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 1: Beguilement
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
An epic fantasy of devotion, destiny, and perilous magic from one of the most honored writers in the field—multiple Hugo Award–winning author Lois McMaster Bujold
Young, pregnant Fawn Bluefield has just fled her family’s farm to the city of Glassforge, where she encounters a patrol of the enigmatic soldier-sorcerers known as Lakewalkers. Fawn has heard stories about the Lakewalkers, wandering necromancers with no permanent homes and no possessions but the clothes they wear and the mysterious knives they carry. What she does not know is that the Lakewalkers are engaged in a perilous campaign against inhuman and immortal magical entities known as “malices.” When Fawn is kidnapped by one of these creatures, it is up to Dag, an older Lakewalker heavy with sorrows and responsibilities, to rescue her. But in the ensuing struggle, it is not Dag but Fawn who kills the creature—at dire cost—and an uncanny accident befalls Dag’s sharing knife, which unexpectedly binds their two fates together.
- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 1: Beguilement
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 2: Legacy
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
Fawn Bluefield, the clever young farmer girl, and Dag Redwing Hickory, the seasoned Lakewalker soldier-sorcerer, have been married all of two hours when they depart her family’s farm for Dag’s home at Hickory Lake Camp. Having gained a hesitant acceptance from Fawn’s family for their unlikely marriage, the couple hopes to find a similar reception among Dag’s Lakewalker kin. But their arrival is met with prejudice and suspicion, setting many in the camp against them, including Dag’s own mother and brother. A faction of Hickory Lake Camp, denying the literal bond between Dag and Fawn, woven in blood in the magical way of the Lakewalkers, even goes so far as to threaten permanent exile for Dag.
Before their fate as a couple is decided, however, Dag is called away by an unexpected—and viciously magical—malice attack on a neighboring hinterland, threatening Lakewalkers and farmers both. What his patrol discovers there will not only change Dag and his new bride, but will call into question the uneasy relationship between their peoples—and may even offer a glimmer of hope for a less divided future.
Filled with heroic deeds, wondrous magic, and rich, all-too-human characters, The Sharing Knife: Legacy is at once a gripping adventure and a poignant romance from one of the most imaginative and thoughtful writers in fantasy today.
- The Sharing Knife, Vol. 2: Legacy
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Read by Bernadette Dunne
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Release Date: 1/01/06
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Barrayar
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 6/22/05
Formats: Digital Audy
Political intrigue, culture clash and romance make a stirring mix in this award-winning follow-up novel to the acclaimed Shards of Honor.
In the wake of interplanetary war, former commander Cordelia Naismith has deserted her own planet to marry the leader of the defeated enemy, Aral Vorkosigan. On his home planet of Barrayar, two rival factions are eyeing the recently vacated throne, and Aral, recently appointed regent of Barrayar by the emperor on his deathbed, must stand between them. As Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, Aral and Cordelia struggle to establish stability in a fragile government thrown into confusion by the transition of power and the threat of civil war. When a palace coup endangers the government, their lives, and her unborn son, Cordelia takes action to secure the safety of her new family and new home.
- Barrayar
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Read by Grover Gardner
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Release Date: 6/22/05
Formats: Digital Audy