FA: Tanith Lee The Secret Books of Paradys HC/DJ 11-8

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Tanith Lee The Secret Books of Paradys HC/DJ 11-8

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Tanith Lee The Secret Books of Paradys

2 hard cover books with dust jackets.

New condition.

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The Secret Books of Paradys I & II
BCE Omnibus Edition containing:
The Book of the Damned: The Secret Books of Paradys I
Popular fantasy author Tanith Lee is at her Gothic, haunting best, creating
an atmosphere charged with horror, eroticism, and decadence. In this first
volume of The Secret Books of Paradys, Lee begins the search for a demonic
creature seemingly impervious to sword, conjuring, or prayer. Readers won't
want to miss number two in the series, THE BOOK OF THE BEAST.

The Book of the Beast: The Secret Books of Paradys II
Second of Lee's projected four-book fantasy series (The Book of the Damned,
1990), set in the forgotten French city Paradys: nine linked stories that
add up to a well-rounded, satisfying whole. Young university student Raoulin
discovers in his ruined- palace lodgings a ghostlike, sexually charged
woman, Helise, whose horrible secret is that she is possessed by a mindless,
ancient, bird-headed demon; the demon propagates itself through the sperm or
womb of its victims. Helise was infected by her husband, a chaste and
honorable man, because she could not restrain her lust for him. Now, having
achieved the demon's purpose by infecting Raoulin, she collapses into dust.
Raoulin attempts suicide, but the demon will not let him die; eventually
coming to his aid will be a Jewish magician and his daughter, who are aware
of the demon's Roman origins and subsequent history. Together they will
attempt to cast forth the Beast. Top-notch demonology and atmosphere, with
convincingly developed characters, but it is Lee's talent for realizing an
exquisite and appalling mingling of lust and horror, sexual pleasure and
loathing, yearning and revulsion, that drives the book and its readers from
cover to cover. Enthralling.

The Secret Books of Paradys III & IV
BCE Omnibus Edition containing:
The Book of the Dead : The Secret Books of Paradys III
The ambience of fin de siecle France imbues these eight gothic tales in the
third volume in Lee's Secret Books of Paradys tetralogy, tracing the
tortured lives once led by those buried in the crypts and cemeteries of the
mythical (or forgotten) city of Paradys. "The Weasel Bride" twists a
folktale about a man who marries an enchanted weasel and dies of her bite
into an account of a young husband who kills his beloved bride on their
wedding night and takes her dreadful secret to the gallows. The artist in
"The Glass Dagger," who normally saves her emotion for her art, is consumed
by jealous rage and turns to supernatural revenge when a jaded aristocrat
tries an old stratagem to win her love. In "The Moon Is a Mask" a drudge who
creates a world of beauty in her garret room steals to buy a mask that turns
her into a vampire owl. The miasma of corruption and death, combined with
vivid and at times elegiac writing will engross readers who fancy this dark
shade of fantasy writing.

The Book of the Mad: The Secret Books of Paradys IV
In the final two volumes of the Paradys series, Tanith Lee completes this
thrillingly dark and decadent alternate world, the imagined city of Paradys.
In The Book of the Dead, the dark atmosphere is charged with hedonism,
sexuality and death in eight interlocking short stories. In The Book of the
Mad a seductive nightmare unfolds in three parallel versions of the
city--Paradis, Paradys and Paradise. Connected by a labyrinth of ice whose
dangers are amplified by the will and emotion of its lunatic travelers,
these cities provide the stage for a drama of mythical proportions, setting
up a darkly dazzling finish to The Secret Books of Paradys.

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