Piers Anthony

Be careful what you wish for... "I'm actually a smart girl who would make any man an excellent wife. But no man sees that. No man is interested in my mind or personality, just my whatevers. So here is my wish: I'm board stiff. I want Adventure, Excitement, and Romance." So begins Piers Anthony's thirty-eighth Xanth novel, in which Irrelevant Kandy looks at her reflection in the water of the shallow well and sees luxuriant midnight-black hair reaching...

In Xanth, everyone has a talent. But that doesn't mean everyone loves his talent, and no one understands that better than Hapless. Endowed with the ability to conjure any instrument he wants, Hapless could be an extraordinary musician if only he could play a tune that didn't fall ear-piercingly flat. His one desire is to find an instrument he can play. When the Good Magician hears about Hapless's desperate desire, he sends the young man on a...

Wenda Woodwife must call together a cadre of companions in order to go on a quest to help Good Magician Humphrey, so that he, in turn, can aid her in finding her adventure-seeking husband, Prince Charming.

Summoned to Xanth as part of a Demons wager, Bryce is transported out of his aged body and granted youth and magic in exchange for his agreement to woo and marry a reluctant Princess Harmony.

The Metal Maiden Series is a wildly different kind of story that tells how Elasa, a humanoid robot who achieves consciousness, eventually saves the world from surpassing horror Elasa the robot's friend Mona exchanges to the colony planet to occupy the body of a woman five months pregnant. Even so, she gets more than she bargained for, as she works with a precognitive lamb.

The Metal Maiden Series is a wildly different kind of story that tells how Elasa, a humanoid robot who achieves consciousness, eventually saves the world from surpassing horror Humanoid robots are surely in our future, but their uses are likely to be limited to body guarding, childcare, companionship, and sex. Other chores can better be done by smart non-humanoid machines designed for those specific tasks. But for these limited purposes, the best...

Orb had a rare gift—the magic which manifested whenever she sang or played her harp. No one could resist her music. But she knew that greater magic lay in the Llano, the mystic music that controlled all things. The quest for the Llano occupied Orb's life. Until she met Natasha, handsome and charming, and an even finer musician. But her mother Niobe came as an Aspect of Fire, with the news that Orb had been chosen for the role of Incarnation of Nature—The...

Here in a fourth complete-in-itself novel of the Incarnations of Immortality, Piers Anthony again combines fascinating magic with a gripping, complex struggle between good and evil.
Mym was a dutiful son, but his father the Rajah interfered in his love life once too often. Rather than wed without love, he took up the Red Sword, symbol of office of the Incarnation of War.
At first he thought his efforts could ameliorate some of the suffering...

On the technological, decadent world of Proton, someone was trying to destroy Stile, serf and master Gamesman. His only escape lay through a mysterious “curtain” revealed by a loving robot.
Beyond the curtain lay Phaze—a world totally ruled by magic. There, his first encounter was with an amulet that turned into a demon determined to choke him to death. And there, he soon learned, his alternate self had already been murdered...