Urban Trees

Two-time Aurora Award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times. In the first book of his Fionavar Tapestry series, five college students meet a wizard who takes them to the heart of the first of all worlds - a place called Fionavar. The students soon discover that they have been pre-ordained as part of the pattern called the Fionavar Tapestry - and if they don't fulfill their destinies, the world will suffer devastating consequences.

Percival Everett's The Trees is a must-listen that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

Where the Marble Arch stands today in London was once the Tyburn gallows - also known as The Hanging Tree. The walk toward those gallows along Oxford Street and past the Mayfair mansions has a bloody and haunted history as the last trip of the condemned. Some things never change. For both blood and ghosts have returned to those mansions of the super-rich. And it's up to Peter Grant - England's last wizard and the Metropolitan Police's reluctant investigator of all things supernatural - to get to the bottom of the sinister doings.

The story of a single tree, from the moment the seed is released from its cone until, more than 500 years later, it lies on the forest floor as a nurse log, giving life to ferns, mosses, and hemlocks, even as its own life is ending.

The Trees is the story of an American family in the wilderness - a family that "followed the woods as some families follow the sea." The time is the end of the 18th century, the wilderness is the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River. But principally, The Trees is the story of a girl named Sayward, eldest daughter of Worth and Jary Luckett, raised in the forest far from the rest of humankind, yet growing to realize that the way of the hunter must cede to the way of the tiller of soil.

Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant - a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago.

Olive Kennedy doesn't believe in fairy tales. In a desperate attempt to earn income, fairy world therapist Olive Kennedy resorts to finding clients at the Texas Renaissance Festival. When she discovers the corpse of her client's husband discarded in her booth, she realizes that earning her next paycheck is the least of her worries. Even worse, Olive learns the murderer may be a magical monster from the fairy realm.

When the fairy realm faces a new, terrifying threat from a goblin Spellweaver, Olive Kennedy leaves her home in Houston to travel through the most dangerous places in Faythander in order to confront him. While there, she learns that history is a muddled subject, especially when elves are involved. Her only comfort comes from Kull, her Viking warrior sidekick - who somehow negates her bad fortune. Yet how long can their relationship last when his past is brought to light? Olive will be tested beyond anything she has endured so far, as the secrets of Faythander's sordid and bloody past are exposed - one that could irrevocably alter the future and destroy the lives of everyone she loves.

Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of Police Constable Peter Grant or the Folly—London's police department for supernatural cases—even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the flats of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But the daughter of Lady Ty, influential goddess of the Tyburn river, was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favor.

The fate of ancient knowledge and power is in peril. For centuries, witches have held this age-old knowledge, passing it from one generation to the next, and ensuring the balance of the world. But when King Saul of Israel condemns magic as malevolent and mercilessly slaughters most of the witches, the Witch of Endor faces a grim reality; there is no one left to inherit the sacred wisdom. With her own death foretold and approaching, she has no choice but to perform a ritual to shift the knowledge to a chosen tree.

As nature's largest and longest-lived creations, trees play an extraordinarily important role in our cities; they are living landmarks that define space, cool the air, soothe our psyches, and connect us to nature and our past. Jill Jonnes's Urban Forests tells the captivating stories of the founding mothers and fathers of urban forestry, in addition to those arboreal advocates presently using the latest technologies to illuminate the value of trees to public health and to our urban infrastructure.

Bea is a lowly cabbage fairy, but she dreams of being an official Fairy Godmother. So when she is finally given a chance to prove her worth, Bea is determined to make a success of it. Besides, how hard can a Happy Ever After story be? Every girl wants to be rescued by a handsome man, don’t they? Apparently not. Bea's heroine doesn't want to be in her story, and her hero is much more interested in the ugly sister. The same ugly sister who is trying to overthrow the Kingdom.

Billionaire Saul Abercrombie owns a vast tract of land on the Pembrokeshire coast. By restoring the original forest that covered the area before medieval times, he believes he will rekindle the spirits of ancient folklore. But the re-planting of the forest will revive an altogether darker and more dangerous entity - and young arboreal expert Tom Curtis will find himself engaging in an epic, ancient battle between good and evil. A battle in which there can be only one survivor.

Visit a future San Francisco in which Golden Gate Park and the Presidio are thriving farms, luxury hotels are the palaces of neighborhood kings and book shops are treasuries of wisdom. This is the world of Taco Del, Merlin to His Majesty, King of Embarcadero. In this world, the young wizard must unravel a great mystery to save his besieged kingdom. King Elvis wants to steal its secrets, mysterious outsiders want to expel its citizens, an ancient and sinister Force threatens spiritual domination.

When he was almost killed by a falling AC unit at his MMA gym, Luke thought he must have had a guardian angel looking over him. Little did he know, he had actually been appointed three guardian angels. He also couldn't have known that one of them had been captured by an evil cult, and an ice demon sent after him. Forced by circumstances to accept that reality isn’t quite as he thought, Luke embarks on a journey that takes him to places where heaven and hell have mutated, and the beings he encounters aren’t always as they seem.

I’m a shifter with a checkered past and sticky fingers. I like my new life. I’ve got good friends, cheap barbecue, and weekly karaoke. Sure, I live in an apartment with more deadbolts than functioning windows. And yeah, I earn just enough tips as a mediocre bartender to buy name brand ramen noodles. But I can be as flamboyant and fun as I want—as long as I keep my hands clean. When a mysterious stranger strolls into my bar with tales of a magical dagger so rare it’s guaranteed to start a bidding war, that itch is back. One last heist… for old times’ sake. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

A scavenger hunt for the relic my mom hid decades ago should’ve been simple enough. I expected to spend a few weeks chasing clues in my old stomping grounds, followed by a fat payday and an overdue vacation. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one after that artifact. Between the witch trying to get her hands on it and the vampires determined to use it to open the veil, the stakes have never been higher. Since I can no longer trust the Enclave’s intentions, I’m ready to cut out the middleman.

Christmas Tree is a modern short story about festive spirit, set in an urban environment.

Sophie Briggs has made it to her junior year at the School of Roots and Vines, but it isn't all fun and games for the Defenders. Change is coming. Some good and some . . . not so much. Friends are breaking up—will Sophie have to take sides? Sophie and Marcus are struggling, too. Marcus is pushing Sophie and the rest of the gang away, worried that being a Templeton will put them all at risk. He thinks he needs to do this by himself. Does he have to go it alone?

When 14-year-old Gayle gets in trouble with a boy - again - her mother doesn’t give her a choice: Gayle is getting sent away from New York to her family down South, along with her baby, José. In a small town in Georgia, there is nowhere to go but church, nothing to do but chores, and no friends except her goody-goody, big-boned, kneesock-wearing cousin, Cookie. Gayle is stuck cleaning up after Great, the old family matriarch who stays upstairs in her bed.