A Literary Guild Featured Alternate
Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come....

'In my time I have been called many things: sister, lover, priestess, wise-woman, queen'

Morgaine, gifted with the Sight and fated with her brother-lover's doom, recounts the glorious tragedy of Camelot's brief flowering - not as a tale of knightly deeds, but as a woman's rounded view of society in the crucible of change.

Through the lives of pious Guinevere, ambitious Morgause, Priestess of Avalon Viviane and her successor as Lady of the Lake, Morgaine herself, this rich and haunting epic reveals a greater threat to the Old People than the Saxons. For the spread of patriarchal Roman ways and a narrow Christianity seem likely to drive the ancient worship of the Mother forever into the mists ...

Penguin also publish the other novels in the bestselling Avalon series: The Forests of Avalon and Lady of Avalon.

The Forest House--prequel to The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley's beloved and enduring classic--is a mesmerizing epic of one woman's mythic role at a turning point in history.

In a Britain struggling to survive Roman invasion, Eilan is the daughter of a Druidic warleader, gifted with visions and marked by fate to become a priestess of the Forest House.

But fate also led Eilan to Gaius, a soldier of mixed blood, son of the Romans sent to subdue the native British. For Gaius, Eilan felt forbidden love, and her terrible secret will haunt her even as she is anointed as the new High Priestess. With mighty enemies poised to destroy the magic the Forest House shelters, Eilan must trust in the power of the great Goddess to lead her through the treacherous labyrinth of her destiny.

Take The Forest HouseQuiz

'Though the world should change entirely, there are places where a little light of the Otherworld shines through to the world of men. And that light shall not be lost to humankind so long as men still seek solace in this holy earth called Avalon.'

In the dark days after the bloodshed at the Forest House, the Britons who guard the old ways retreat ever further from the world. Safe in the mists that protect the sacred isle of Avalon, Druids and priestesses wait and prepare down ten generations for the Defender who will come ...

For Caillean the enemies are twofold: the Romans, with their stone cities and foreign gods; and the growing bigotry of the Christians who share the Lady's sanctuary. And though it is told salvation will come through the union of her beloved Gawen, son of a hundred kings, and Sianna of the old people, the way lies not through victory, but sacrifice.

Two hundred years later, Dierna finds she must turn to the old foe in her struggle against a new threat. Yet in striving to keep Rome's British resources for the country's own protection, may not her meddling in men's affair hasten the fall of the empire itself and damage Avalon?

And Viviane faces desperate times indeed, for the last flicker of Rome is failing fast, and the Saxons ride roughshod over peoples and promises alike. But there is hope even in this extremity, for a Merlin is made among the Druids once more, and the day of the Defender, so long foretold, draws close ...

A spellbinding historical fantasy Lady Of Avalon links Marion Zimmer Bradley's bestselling novels The Forest House and The Mists of Avalon.