Kage Baker

Before the Riders came to their remote valley, the Yendri led a tranquil pastoral life. Gard, taken as a slave by powerful mages, has found subtle ways to earn his freedom, and becomes lord and commander of a demon army.

A set of thirteen short stories, some Company stories, some in the setting of Anvil of the World and some standalone tales.

Kage Baker's stories and novels of the mysterious organization that controls time travel, The Company, have made her famous in SF. So has her talent for clever dialogue and pointed social commentary with a light touch. "Ms. Baker is the best thing to happen to modern science fiction since Connie Willis or Dan Simmons. She mixes adventure, history and societal concerns in just the right amount, creating an action-packed but thoughtful read," says The Dallas Morning News. The Anvil of the World is her first fantasy novel, a journey across a landscape filled with bizarre creatures, human and otherwise. It is the tale of Smith, of the large extended family of Smiths, of the Children of the Sun. They are a race given to blood feuds, and Smith was formerly an extremely successful assassin. Now he has wearied of his work and is trying to retire in another country, to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him. His problems begin when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from the inland city of Troon to the seaside city of Salesh. The caravan is dogged by murder, magic, and the brooding image of the Master of the Mountain, a powerful demon, looking down from his mountain kingdom upon the greenlands and the travelers passing below. In Salesh, Smith becomes an innkeeper, but on the journey he befriended the young Lord Ermenwyr, a decadent demonic half-breed. Each time Ermenwyr turns up, he brings new trouble with him.

"Baker is the best thing to happen to modern science fiction since Connie Willis or Dan Simmons." - Dallas Morning News It's Not All Black And White! Is it possible to interfere with History in a moral way, especially if profit is the primary motivation for doing so? In fact, is it possible to sustain any ethical standards at all when handed what amounts to unlimited power? These and other shadowy questions are raised in Black Projects, White Knights, Kage Baker's Unofficial History of Dr. Zeus, Inc.—known to its employees simply as the Company. This collection brings together fourteen Company stories in one volume for the first time. Three of these stories have never seen publication until now—and one, "The Queen in Yellow," was written exclusively for this collection. Follow the secret activities of the Company's field agents—once Human, now centuries-old time-traveling immortal cyborgs: Botanist Mendoza's search for the rare hallucinogenic Black Elysium grape in 1844 Spanish-held Santa Barbara, California ("Noble Mold"); Facilitator Joseph's dreamlike solicitation of the ill-of-health Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879 ("The Literary Agent"); Marine Salvage Specialist Kalugin's recovery of an invaluable Eugene Delacroix painting from a sunken yacht off the coast of Los Angeles in 1894 ("The Wreck of the Gladstone"); and Literature Preservationist Lewis's retrieval of priceless literary artifacts, in 1914 Egypt, from the mummy case of Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet ("The Queen in Yellow"). This collection also includes the first four Alec Checkerfield stories—and the alert reader should be able to piece together the mystery of Alec's life: Who created this little superman, and to what purpose? With a new author introduction, "The Hounds of Zeus," in which access to the Company, and the Company's files, is revealed. Praise for the author's fourth Company novel, The Graveyard Game: "By turns hilarious, terrifying, sad, and provocative, and always utterly intriguing." - Kirkus Reviews

At Cahuenga Pass, in a stagecoach inn on the road to Los Angeles, Mendoza meets her new cyborg colleagues in this third novel of the Company. In the vein of "Grand Hotel, " readers get to know the lives and stories, both sad and funny, of these operatives from the 24th century.

Collects 'In the Garden of Iden' and 'Sky Coyote' in one volume: In the Garden of Iden: This is the first novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary SF, now back in print from Tor. In the 24th century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr. Zeus. One of these is Mendoza the botanist. She is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. But while there, she meets Nicholas Harpole, with whom she falls in love. And that love sounds great bells of change that will echo down the centuries, and through the succeeding novels of The Company. Sky Coyote: Facilitator Joseph has outlasted entire civilizations during his twenty-thousand years of service to Dr. Zeus, the twenty-fourth century Company that created immortal operatives like him to preserve history and culture. The year is 1699 and Joseph is now in Alta California, to imitate an ancient Native-American Coyote god, and save the native Chumash from the white Europeans.He has the help of the Botanist Mendoza, who hasn't gotten over the death of her lover Nicholas, in Elizabethan England. Lately though, Joseph has started to have a few doubts about The Company. There are whispers about the year 2355, about operatives that suddenly go missing. Time is running out for Joseph, which is ironic considering he's immortal, but no one ever said that it was easy being a god.