Black Wine

Product Description As they struggle to survive in a barbarous fantasy land, a mother and daughter attempt to shake off the bonds of female slavery and escape to freedom. A first novel. Amazon.com Review Winner of the 1997 William J. Crawford Memorial Award (for a first fantasy novel), this utopian, archetypal story follows five generations of women--from the monumental, sadistic despot to her great-great-granddaughter working in a warehouse--through their travels away from and toward one another. Loves and deaths are passed through the generations, collected on their successive journeys, each restless character setting others in motion as she seeks freedom and kinship. Candas Jane Dorsey's concise language is powerful, telling an intense story without emotional plateaus, only peaks and valleys, joy and grief. This is an involving, unsettling book. It is easily one of the best and most ambitious novels of 1996 and one that will provoke thought and conversation. From Publishers Weekly An acclaimed poet and short-story writer in her native Canada, Dorsey is almost unknown in the States. That should change with the publication of this novel, her first. The narrative braids the lives of three women who are linked by their independent spirits as well as by blood. One is "the waif," a young slave whose strange dreams and troubling half-memories hint at a past she can't remember. When the waif is sold as a concubine to a prince in the distant northern Land of the Dark Isles, she begins a journey that will lead her to the secret of her past as well as to her future. Weaving the waif's tale with that of Essa, an adventurous young woman determined to find her mother, and the journal entries of a woman escaping a husband she neither loves nor wants, Dorsey creates a complex and human story about freedom, love and the need to retain one's own identity. The fantasy setting is stark, a world where the most brutal events are treated with cold matter-of-factness, but Dorsey's writing is strong, even unflinching. Those who enjoy the work of such popular feminist speculative fiction writers as Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin will find much to admire here. (Jan.) FYI: Dorsey is head of Tesseract Books, a leading Canadian SF publisher.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal For her first fantasy novel, Dorsey features an old woman in a cage who writes her diary in blood and tells her story to a curious young girl. This journey of self-discovery and identity fits in the feminist tradition of Joanna Russ. Recommended for fantasy collections.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Candas Jane Dorsey is the head of Tesseracts Books.

Literature & Fiction

Dorsey, Candas Jane

United States

Tor Books

As they struggle to survive in a barbarous fantasy land, a mother and daughter attempt to shake off the bonds of female slavery and escape to freedom

Candas Jane Dorsey's first novel, the fantasy Black Wine, won three significant awards and got enthusiastic reviews across the United States and Canada. Now Dorsey returns with a literary SF parable about a woman named Morgan and her offbeat household. In the near future, when political and social conservatism dominate society, Morgan inherits a big, century-old mansion in a prairie city and moves there to rebuild her life. She fills the house with sexual misfits and political outcasts, in a sense, orphans like herself. But the final tenant is one she never could have imagined: an alien child.

A Paradigm of Earth

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Candas Jane Dorsey's first novel, the fantasy Black Wine, won three significant awards and got enthusiastic reviews across the United States and Canada. Now Dorsey returns with a literary SF parable about a woman named Morgan and her offbeat household. In the near future, when political and social conservatism dominate society, Morgan inherits a big, century-old mansion in a prairie city and moves there to rebuild her life. She fills the house with sexual misfits and political outcasts, in a sense, orphans like herself. But the final tenant is one she never could have imagined: an alien child.

Rescued from torpor and poverty by the need to help a good friend deal with the murder of her beloved granddaughter, our downsized-social-worker protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, are jolted into a harsh, street-wise world of sex, lies, and betrayal, to which they respond with irony, wit, intelligence (except for the cat), and tenacity. With judicious use of the Oxford comma, pop culture trivia, common mystery tropes, and a keen eye for deceit, our protagonist swaggers through the mean streets of - yes, a Canadian city! - and discovers that what seems at first to be just a grotty little street killing is actually the surface of a grandiose and glittering set of criminal schemes.

The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (1)

Humor & Satire

ECW Press

A wise-cracking, grammar-obsessed, pansexual amateur sleuth is thrust into the world of the uber-rich when her enigmatic, now-famous childhood friend breezes back into her life begging for help with a dangerous stalker 
Our nameless postmodern amateur sleuth is still recovering from her first dangerous foray into detective work when her old friend Priscilla Jane Gill breezes back into her life and begs for help. Pris, now a famous travel writer, fears she’s being stalked again after a nearly fatal attack by a deranged fan a year earlier. In Pris’s dizzying world of wealth and privilege, nameless meets dreamy but sinister tech billionaire Nathan and his equally unnerving sidekick Chiles. Pris’s stalker is murdered outside her book launch, and the shadow of obsession continues to stalk Pris. With no one she can totally trust, nameless knows she’s not going to like the answer ― but she delves into her old friend’s past, seeking the mastermind behind Pris’s troubles before it’s too late. Bunnywit does his level best to warn them, but no one else speaks Cat, so background peril transforms into foreground betrayal and murder. 
In the second installation of the Epitome Apartments Mystery Series, our heroine walks a dangerous path in a world where money is no object and the stakes are higher, and more personal, than ever.

What's the Matter with Mary Jane?: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (2)

The witty, queer accidental detective of the Epitome Apartments is back. While helping to solve a community murder, she also needs to convince police that she didn't revenge-kill the man who took everything from her The nameless amateur sleuth of The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? has often said that death is too good for Lockwood Chiles -- who is in prison for killing her beloved partner, Nathan, and her close friend Pris -- and makes no secret that she hates the man who massacred her shot at happiness. So when Chiles ends up dead in his cell, it's no wonder she becomes a prime suspect. Meanwhile, an aggressive band of men in military-adjacent garb turn a string of assaults against nameless's unhoused neighbors into full-bore murder right behind the Epitome Apartments, and she rashly promises to help bring them to law. As if that's not enough, unscrupulous parties are scheming to strip her of her inheritance, money she and Nathan had intended would address the city's lack of harm-reduction services and low-income housing. Now it is nameless's mission to clear her name and to hold her tattered community together, all while she's coming apart herself.

He Wasn't There Again Today: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (3)

There are no damsels in distress here!A city guard in a world where sunlight is the greatest currency must choose between what's done and what's right when she meets a woman from the other side of the wall who's caring for a strange brood. A teen girl is inducted into a secret society that slays mythological creatures. A woman and her daughter compete in a race where dragons pull chariots. A very special librarian guards a very special hoard. These and other stories of dragons and empowered women (and empowered women dragons!) fill the pages of this anthology. Featuring stories by Krista D. Ball, Kevin Cockle, M.L.D. Curelas, Aurora B. C. Donev, Jennifer R. Donohue, Candas Jane Dorsey, Megan Engelhardt, Joseph Halden, Blake Jessop, Gwen C. Katz, Amanda Kespohl, Jennifer Lee Rossman, Stephanie Lorée, Damascus Mincemeyer, JB Riley and Laura VanArendonk Baugh.

Hear Me Roar

Ball, Krista D.

Jessop, Blake

Parrish, Rhonda

Engelhardt, Megan

Cockle, Kevin

Halden, Joseph

Curelas, MLD

Donev, Aurora B. C.

Donohue, Jennifer R.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Poise and Pen Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dorsey, Candas Jane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dorsey, Candas Jane

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dorsey, Candas Jane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Black Wine

Black Wine

A Paradigm of Earth

A Paradigm of Earth

The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (1)

What's the Matter with Mary Jane?: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (2)

He Wasn't There Again Today: An Epitome Apartments Mystery (3)

Hear Me Roar