A dragon. A scholar. A very short story about death.

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the

Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect

subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin

him down for the sittings.None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible,

spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying

clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on

Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem.

At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St

James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to

find out if the world is ending.

For centuries the Seleighe have kept imprisoned a nameless, monstrous God.

But the seal is failing, and Veresan of the Summer Fire must travel far beyond

his own land to prevent disaster.

What happens when the plot ends? A relentless barrage of weddings, babies, and

planetary colonisation! Meandering through the two years following the

conclusion of the Touchstone Trilogy, this self-indulgent collection of family

reminiscence is more saccharine than dramatic, with the most action to be

found in snowball fights.For those who truly just want to know what happens next, no matter how

mundane, read on for the everyday, ordinary lives of psychic space ninjas

playing house.

One does not simply walk onto another planet. At least not without the help of

a daughter who has developed unlikely powers, fought an intra-dimensional war,

and then arranged for a family relocation to a futuristic clone of Earth.

Laura Devlin would gladly have paid any price to have her daughter back, so

living in a techno-paradise with spaceship views is merely an added bonus. And

a dream come true.But Arcadian paradises do not come without complications. Laura’s include a

plethora of psychic grandchildren. Interplanetary diplomacy. Her daughter’s

immense fame. And KOTIS, the military watchdog that seems to consider Laura’s

entire family government property.Forewarned by her daughter’s experiences, Laura had anticipated as many

problems as she could, and didn’t doubt her ability to cope with the rest. But

she had not planned on Gidds Selkie, a military officer chipped from flint

and not at all the sort of man lifelong geek Laura had ever imagined would

find her interesting.Burned in the past, Laura is surprised to find herself tempted. Is this a new

start to go with a new world? Or a mismatch doomed to failure?

When a motionless woman dressed in white appears in the village of Falk,

Kendall Stockton has no inkling that the strange apparition will soon

leave her homeless, and tangled in the affairs of mages and monsters.

For the white figure is the first sign of a spell which will shatter

cities, and make the caster as powerful as the gods.Saved by a stranger who claims her goal is to stop the woman, Kendall is

torn between admiring the mage Rennyn Claire’s strength, and doubting

her methods. What is Rennyn willing to do to win? Do the best of

intentions justify pragmatic sacrifice, or is Rennyn Claire no better

than the monster she is trying to stop?

Time stole victory.Medair an Rynstar returned too late to drive back the Ibisian invasion. Centuries too late.When friend and enemy have become the same thing, what use are the weapons Medair planned to use to protect her Empire? There is no magic, no artefact, no enchanted trinket which can undo the past.But no matter how Medair wishes to hide from the consequences of her failure, there are those who will not allow her the luxury of denying the present. Her war is already lost, but she carries weapons which could change the course of new battles.With the skirmishes of war beginning, and hunters in near pursuit, it is her conscience Medair cannot escape. Whose side should she be on? What is she really running from?

Time stole victory.Medair an Rynstar returned too late to drive back the Ibisian invasion. Centuries too late.When friend and enemy have become the same thing, what use are the weapons Medair planned to use to protect her Empire? There is no magic, no artefact, no enchanted trinket which can undo the past.But no matter how Medair wishes to hide from the consequences of her failure, there are those who will not allow her the luxury of denying the present. Her war is already lost, but she carries weapons which could change the course of new battles.With the skirmishes of war beginning, and hunters in near pursuit, it is her conscience Medair cannot escape. Whose side should she be on? What is she really running from?

Fallon DeVries has a sister who lives only in his mind. Paying the price

of magic gone wrong, Aurienne is trapped watching a world she cannot

touch, only able to communicate with her brother while he sleeps.And it’s slowly killing him.Fallon and Auri’s best chance of untangling their lives is to win the

help of a mage of unparalleled ability. But how can they ask for help

when the warped spell prevents him from speaking?Besides, Rennyn Claire - once the most powerful mage in the world - is a

shadow of her former self: ill, injured and unlikely to recover unless

she can hunt down the monster who once tried to make her his slave. But

that Wicked Uncle is nowhere to be found, and other dangers, once

slumbering dormant, are stirring…

On her last day of high school, Cassandra Devlin walked out of exams and into

a forest. Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in

any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing; alone, she will be

lucky to survive.The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more

puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off

the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she’s being

watched?Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable

Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was

primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people’s skulls, and few

have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass

finds herself processed as a stray, a refugee displaced by the gates torn

between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must

adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained

attitude that strays are backward and slow.Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world

discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?

France, under the rule of the Court of the Moon, is a country of

cyclical change, where the true rulers arrive every night to compete

among themselves, and humans are backdrop, witnesses, inessential – and

yet inextricably intertwined.It is the reign of the Gilded Tower, and fashions are daring.Two Wings: Griff Tenning has suffered too much change in the past

year, and wishes everything would quiet down for a while - or, better

still, would go back to when his parents were alive. But, even so, it’s

useful that his odd aunt can afford airship tickets to France. On such a

quick trip, his hated travel sickness won’t be enough to keep him from a

chance to stand beneath the impossible Towers of the Moon.Forfeit: Forfeit is the newest game of the Court of the Moon, and

one seemingly designed for humans to lose. But Arianne Seaforth is

willing to pay a great deal to help her oldest friend – and she is

learning to extract a price of her own.Death and the Moon: Eluned Tenning can barely remember all the names

of the vast network of cousins making her sixteenth birthday party so

overwhelming. But she has no problems with would-be actor Milo, who is

so calmly quiet and friendly. She’d never step on a stage herself, but

she’s happy to help him rehearse.

The conclusion of the story begun in "The Silence of Medair". A glossary of terms can be found at the end of the book.Medair an Rynstar wants only to leave.Five hundred years after the Empire she served fell before the Ibisian invasion, Medair has betrayed her Emperor’s memory by helping the descendants of the invaders. She knows she will be reviled, that to thousands she is hero-become-villain. Her one goal is to return to the hidden cave where she slept out of time, and hope that she wakes in a world where the name Medair an Rynstar has been forgotten.Assassins, armies, and desperate magic complicate Medair’s plan of escape, leading her inexorably to face the very people her choice has cost the most. She has learned that you can never to return to your past, or run from the consequences of your actions, but can she find a way to live in defeat?