The Inheritance

A collection of novellas and stories from one of the most critically acclaimed authors in the fantasy genre, Robin Hobb. Including work written under her pseudonym, Megan Lindholm.

Bingtown heiresses rub shoulders with vampires, tramps and feral cats in this wonderful collection.

In ''The Homecoming'', Lady Carillion Carrock and a few other Jamaillian nobles are sailing to the Cursed Shores after being exiled for plotting against the Satrap. Still, Carillion believes they are bound for wondrous cities, where ancient monarchs dusted their skin with gold and wore jewels above their eyes. But when she is marooned by the ship's unscrupulous captain, she will soon discover the grim reality of what survival in the Rain Wilds entails.

''The Silver Lady'' is a would-be writer, eking out a dull existence by working in a Sears store. Then one day a man comes in: fortyish, pleasant. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except he says his name is Merlin, and he's about to change her life.

In ''Cat's Meat'', Rosemary gets involved with the wrong man. Pell is lazy, good for nothing and a bully. Her best friend, Hilia, knew it and so did her tom cat, Marmalade. Even after she has his child, a beautiful baby boy, he leaves her for another woman. Now he's back, and something must be done...

Megan Lindholm (Wizard of the Pigeons) writes tightly constructed SF and fantasy with a distinctly contemporary feel. Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest) writes sprawling, multi-volume fantasies set in imaginary realms. These two writers, apparently so different, are, of course, the same person, each reflecting an aspect of a single multifaceted imagination.Inheritance gathers the best of Hobb and Lindholm's shorter fiction into one irreplaceable volume containing ten stories and novellas (seven by Lindholm, three by Hobb), together with a revealing introduction and extensive, highly readable story notes. The Lindholm section leads off with the Hugo and Nebula-nominated novella “A Touch of Lavender,” a powerful account of love, music, poverty, and addiction set against an extended encounter between human and alien societies. Other memorable entries include “Cut,” a reflection on the complex consequences of freedom, and the newly published “Drum Machine,” an equally absorbing meditation on the chaotic nature of the creative impulse. Two of Robin Hobb's contributions revisit the world of her popular Live Traders series. “Homecoming” enlarges the earlier history of those novels through the journal entries of Lady Carillion Carrock, while “The Inheritance” concerns a disenfranchised young woman who comes to understand the true nature of her grandmother's legacy. And in “Cat's Meat,” a long and wonderful story written expressly for this collection, an embattled single mother reclaims her life with the help of a gifted—and utterly ruthless—cat.Inheritance offers the best of two separate but related fictional worlds. Whatever their differences, the Hobb and Lindholm stories have certain crucial elements in common: their intelligence, their attention to detail, and their instant, almost effortless accessibility. Together, these beautifully crafted tales constitute a unique—and important—collection that offers both offers both intellectual pleasure and pure narrative excitement on virtually every page.