2007

Patricia A. McKillip. Solstice Wood

The World Fantasy Award-winning author of "Od Magic" makes a foray into the modern world with this contemporary fantasy about the tangled lives mortals lead when they turn their eyes from the beauty and mystery that lie just outside of the everyday.

2006

Neil Gaiman. Anansi Boys

Neil Gaiman now gives us a mythology for a modern age -- complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime.

2005

Susanna Clarke. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that it leaves readers longing for more.

2004

Robin McKinley. Sunshine

"Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane." - Booklist

2003

Patricia A. McKillip. Ombria in Shadow

When Ombria's prince breathes his last, the struggle to rule the whole of the city--both its light and shadows--will rest in the hands of those whose fractured lives align like the lost pieces of a magical puzzle.

2002

Lois McMaster Bujold. The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril comes face-to-face with old enemies when he is offered the post of secretary to the Royesse Iselle, the beautiful, strong-willed sister to the heir of Chalion's throne. Yet something far more sinister threatens Cazaril: a curse that taints not only the royal family he serves, but also those within its circle.

2001

Midori Snyder. The Innamorati

2000

Peter S. Beagle. Tamsin

Tamsin is a young woman who died over 300 years ago. Jennifer is a young American transplanted to England. They are two lonely souls on opposite sides of life and death--a boundary they are both about to cross.

1999

Neil Gaiman. Stardust

In the sleepy English countryside of decades past, a lovelorn young man stepsthrough a gap in a high stone wall, and into the most unforgettable adventureof his life.

1998

A.S. Byatt. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

1997

Terri Windling. The Wood Wife

When Maggie Black comes to the desert home of poet Davis Cooper, seeking an answer to the riddle of his death, she begins a journey of self-discovery that will change her forever, coming face to face with the wild spirits that inhabit that strange and magical place.

1996

Elizabeth Hand. Waking the Moon

A college student discovers that every institution in the world is controlled by an evil clandestine order called the Benandanti. Now, after thousands of years of patriarchal rule, the time of the Benandanti is over. The vengeful Moon Goodess has awakened, and she wants her world back.

1995

Patricia A. McKillip. Something Rich and Strange

When a mysterious artist comes to Megan's and Jonah's seaside art shop, strange clues begin to appear in Megan's seascapes, Jonah is seduced into the sea, and Megan must find a way into the secret lands of the ocean.

1994

Delia Sherman. The Porcelain Dove

Berthe Duvet, chambermaid to a French duchess, narrates this tale of eighteenth-century Paris, describing the dazzling world of Marie Antoinette, Beaumarchais, and the Marquis de Sade, already living in the shadow of the guillotine.

1993

Jane Yolen. Briar Rose

Haunted by the tales of the Holocaust, a young American woman begins a search for her grandmother's World War II past.

1992

Eleanor Arnason. A Woman of the Iron People

Li Lixia is one of eight field anthropologists set down on Sigma Draconis II after the first starship from Earth detects pre-industrial intelligent life there. She experiences several of the cultures of the humanoid people of the planet as she travels with Nia, a female exile of the Iron People.

1991

Ellen Kushner. Thomas the Rhymer

Abducted by the Queen of Elfland, True Thomas, the brilliant Rhymer, lives unaging with her in Faerie's inhuman splendor. Finally, Thomas is returned to the world of work and passing time, with only his harp and the Queen's parting gift: the inability to speak anything but the truth.

1990

Tim Powers. The Stress of Her Regard

On the stormy night before his wedding, Dr. Michael Crawford, in an ill-advised moment while drinking and carousing with two of his friends, slips his intended's ring on the finger of a statue of a woman in the inn's courtyard. The next morning the statue has disappeared. Disturbed, Crawford purchases a new ring and goes to his wedding. The night's celebrations are followed by a morning infinitely more horrifying than the previous one--Crawford awakens to find his bride murdered.

1989

Michael Bishop. Unicorn Mountain

When Bo Gavin returns to his cousin Libby's Colorado ranch to die, he joins a self-exiled Ute Indian and his estranged daughter in a desperate quest to save a herd of dying unicorns, visitors from another, magical world.

1988

Orson Scott Card. Seventh Son

Using the lore and folk magic of the men and women who helped settle a continent and the beliefs of the tribes who were here before them, Orson Scott Card has created an alternate frontier America where folk magic works, and has colored the entire history of the colonies. It is into this world, amid the deep wood where the Red Man still holds sway, that a very special child is born...

1987

Peter S. Beagle. The Folk of the Air

1986

Barry Hughart. Bridge of Birds

1985

Jane Yolen. Cards of Grief

1984

Joy Chant. When Voiha Wakes

1983

Carol Kendall. The Firelings

1982

John Crowley. Little, Big

Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end.

1981

J.R.R. Tolkien. Unfinished Tales

An extraordinary discovery is waiting for you on these pages. Mythic lore and forgotten legends unearthed by Christopher Tolkien from his father's archives unveil never-before-told stories of the three ages of ancient Middle-earth.

1976 - 1980

No Award Given

1975

Poul Anderson. A Midsummer Tempest

1974

Mary Stewart. The Hollow Hills

A magnificent tale realized by premier novelist, Mary Stewart, here is the spellbinding, suspenseful story of how Merlin, the Enchanter, helped Arthur become king of all Britain, in an extraordinary story that brings the legend Merlin and his protege Arthur to glowing life.

1973

Evangeline Walton. The Song of Rhiannon

1972

Joy Chant. Red Moon and Black Mountain

1971

Mary Stewart. The Crystal Cave

Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess, Myridden Emrys -- or as he would later be known, Merlin -- leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before the High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon . . . and the conception of Arthur -- king for once and always.