A Glimmer of Guile Mary Patterson Thornburg

A Glimmer of Guile 

Mary Patterson Thornburg

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy

When Vivia entered womanhood and discovered her guile, she thought it was a curse. True, it means she can do unusual things with her mind – move objects, make water boil, tell what people are feeling, even influence the way they feel. But that makes her different, and not in a good way. In Vivia's world, people like her are feared. Her world calls them witches.

Now, though, she's embraced her special psy powers. She's glad to be who she is… except that it means she has to remain celibate. This never seemed like too great a concern until she fell in love with her second teacher, Taso Raym, and realized he shared her feelings. Then, to make matters worse, he sent her away.

So, reluctantly, she's joined an all-female community, Ladygate, and accepted the fact that love is not for her. She's more or less managed to forgive Raym for dumping her, or at least to forget about him. Well, almost. Anyway, she has bigger problems right now. She's been given the task of investigating the disappearance of a lord's son, kidnapped, it seems, by a very bad, very scary witch – Orath, called The Red Prince's Lady. And her guilish training is not quite complete, so she needs help. From Raym.

But Raym has also disappeared. Vivia is on her own, with a mission to complete – one that now touches her heart, whether she wants to admit it or not. She's almost sure she has the necessary strength and skill… to confront Orath and defeat her, to save young Tedor, and to find and rescue Raym – if he wants to be rescued, that is.

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About the author: 

Mary Patterson Thornburg was born in California, grew up in Washington State, moved to Montana when she was 18, and spent many years in Indiana, where she studied and then taught at Ball State University.

Her dream was always to write fantasy stories and novels, but she didn't get started until she and her husband moved back to Montana in 1998. When she'd finished her first story and it was published, she took off running and never looked back. She's had stories in Cicada, Zahir, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, among other places. Two of her short stories earned honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (2006, 2008), and "Niam's Tale," in the July/August 2010 Cicada, won the SCBWI 2011 Magazine Merit Honor Certificate. Her first fantasy/romance/adventure novel, A Glimmer of Guile, was published by Uncial Press in 2014. Her second book for Uncial, The Kura, came out in April, 2015. An Uncial Novel Byte, "Ghosts," was released October 14, 2016, and a second Novel Byte, "Battle Royal," is scheduled for release in January, 2017. Both "Ghosts" and "Battle Royal" are set in the Kura universe.

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