Light Sister Dark Sister

A warrior woman and her dark twin are destined to remake the world in this “powerful” tale, the first in a trilogy by a World Fantasy Award winner (Newsweek). Legend foretold the child named Jenna, who was three-times orphaned before she could crawl, a fate that would leave her in the hands of women who worshipped the benevolent goddess Great Alta. In this world without men, Jenna comes of age, learning quickly the skills of close combat. But her most powerful gift lies elsewhere: a mirror sister who emerges only in the darkness—a twin named Skada—and shares the soul of the young, white-haired warrior who might well be the goddess reborn. But if Jenna is, in truth, the one whose coming is awaited, there is cause for great alarm among those who rule the Dales, for the prophecy speaks of upheaval and change, and a devastating end of all things. An incomparable world-builder and one of America’s premier fantasists, the remarkable Jane Yolen begins a three-part saga as inventive, intelligent, and exciting as anything that has ever been produced in the literature of the fantastic. Brilliantly contrasting the “true” story of Jenna with the later myths, poetry, and so-called scholarship that her coming engendered, Yolen creates a culture as richly imagined as those found in the acclaimed novels of Ursula K. Le Guin. A truly magnificent work, Sister Light, Sister Dark takes fantasy fiction to wondrous places it has never gone before.

"A stunning novel about two sisters, bonded to each other in the net of a family, and how each of them finds a way to break free." "Gray always believed her sister, Bobbie, was the brilliant one; their father, Max, confirmed it. Bobbie was the star, the one whose life was shot through with light. If Bobbie was the light sister, Gray saw herself as the dark one: invisible, depressed, in Bobbie's shadow. Yet Gray is the first to understand that Bobbie's increasingly erratic behavior may be not superior precocity but rather the early signs of mania. Diagnosed as possibly schizophrenic, Bobbie embarks on bizarre and dangerous adventures, while Gray becomes determined to move away from the family and create a new life for herself. Yet even as Gray finds a supportive boyfriend, acceptance at Harvard, a vocation, she feels she is held back by menacing questions that she cannot avoid - questions about sexuality, her sister, her father, herself; questions that threaten to destroy all Gray has worked so hard to create." "Full of real characters, unconventional wisdom about families, and the special insights that can come from pain, Lee Walmsley's first novel is a triumph. Marked by intelligence and humor, Light Sister, Dark Sister is a beautiful book that readers will be unable to forget."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

If you like the fiction of Henry James, the psychology of his brother William, and have a taste for Gothic mysteries you will enjoy The Dark Sister. The novel is a curious mixture of the Victorian repressiveness about sex, intricate stories within stories, and Jewish humor. With a new afterword

Nebula Award Finalist: A long-awaited savior joins forces with her dark twin to confront the evil threatening their land in the second book of the acclaimed epic fantasy the Great Alta Saga Grown to young womanhood in the mountain region of the Dales and trained for combat by the all-female followers of the goddess Great Alta, Jenna reluctantly accepts the fact that she might well be the Anna, the warrior queen who has long been prophesied. Orphaned three times while still a small child, the now-teenage Jenna is compelled to lend her support and skills to the Dales’ rightful king and his brother, Carum, who holds her heart, for the reign of evil usurper Lord Kalas threatens the future of every worshipper of Alta. But Jenna does not ride alone. Whenever darkness falls, she and her companions—a young priestess in training and an aging warrior—are joined by Skada, white-haired Jenna’s dark sister, who shares her destiny and her soul. But even their combined powers may not be enough to defeat the entrenched malevolence that means to destroy everything and everyone they hold dear. A finalist for the Nebula Award for best novel, Jane Yolen’s White Jenna is a wondrous tale of duty, destiny, peril, romance, and fantasy. Interspersed with the myths and poetry the story engendered, it is a brilliantly imaginative creation of a world, a culture, and their enduring lore.

Lynn V. Andrews takes the reader with her as she goes on inward journeys with the help of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and relates the stories of others. Join her as she is initiated into the Sisterhood and creates her own shield, which will show her the nature of her spiritual path (Spirit Woman). Follow her to the Yucatan, where the medicine wheel leads her, and she is faced with the terrifying reality of the butterfly tree (Jaguar Woman). Enter the Dreamtime with her, where she emerges in medieval England as Catherine, and encounters the Grandmother, who offers to show Andrews how to make her life one of goodness, power, adventure, and love (The Woman of Wyrrd). Not all these stories describe the author's own spiritual experiences. Meet Sin Corazòn, an initiate into the Sisterhood, whose husband abandons her. She nearly succumbs to her inner dark power and unleashes her rage on men and the Sisterhood (Dark Sister). Andrews also writes about the elder women of the Sisterhood: their loves, their lives, their losses (Tree of Dreams). Andrews shows us how to channel our own spiritual and intellectual energy and balance the need for love with the desire for power (Love and Power). She takes the reader on numerous spiritual journeys that inevitably uplift.

I had every reason to hate her, my forbidden sister. She was like someone who had died but wouldn't stay buried . . . Emmie Wilcox was only six when her older sister, Roxy, was thrown out of their New York City apartment. Their stern father's military-style rules left no room for rebellion, and Roxy was as defiant as Emmie-now an outstanding student at a private school-is compliant: a perfect daughter, une fille parfaite, as her Parisian-born mother lovingly calls her. Two sisters, total opposites-yet Emmie is secretly obsessed with the mystery surrounding Roxy: What had she done? Where is she now? And is there a hidden side to Emmie that resembles Roxy's spiteful nature? Knowing only that Roxy is a highly paid escort to the city's wealthiest men, Emmie goes behind her father's back to track down the sister she fears, despises, and inexplicably clings to . . . and whose influence might run deeper than Emmie ever imagined.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.