About the Author

Patricia A. McKillip is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, and the author of many fantasy novels, including The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, Stepping from the Shadows, and The Cygnet and the Firebird. She lives in Oregon.

Reviews

When her grandfather dies, bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn reluctantly returns to the small town of her childhood. Brought once more into the radius of her powerful grandmother and the rambling house known as Lynn Hall, Sylvia confronts the ghosts of her past and the possibility that she may not be entirely human-and that her future may involve a group of women who guard the openings between the worlds. With the same gentle elegance that she uses to craft her fairy tale fantasies, McKillip (Od Magic) infuses the present-day world with the elements of myths and the elusiveness of the supernatural. A superb addition to most collections, this should appeal to both adult and YA fantasy fans. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

World Fantasy Award-winner McKillip revisits the setting of her masterful novel Winter Rose (1996) in this compelling contemporary fantasy. Summoned home for her grandfather's funeral, Sylvia Lynn arrives with the intention of leaving as soon as possible. Once there, however, she feels the treacherous pull of the old house, the shadowy forest around it and the otherworldly beings who live there. Sylvia's grandmother introduces her to the Fiber Guild, women who meet once a month to sew the magical barriers that protect Lynn Hall from the fay, "a cold, loveless, dangerous people." But the hall's protective magic has weakened, leaving Sylvia-both mortal and faery herself-vulnerable as "the bridge across the boundaries" between the two worlds. Can generations of mistrust and long-hoarded secrets yield to a truce, let alone a new understanding and even trust between faery and human? Though McKillip has traded her usual lyrical style for a sparser approach, she doesn't stint on characterization, mood or mystery in this multilayered tale. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.