Works by
Sheri S. Tepper
(aka A.J. Orde, B.J. Oliphant, E E Horlak, Sheri S. Eberhart)
(Writer)
[1929 - ]

Writing as A.J. Orde

Jason Lynx Mystery Series

1. A Little Neighborhood Murder (1989)
   When Jason Lynx's neighbors, George and Betty Whitney, are murdered, Jason discovers the police consider him the number one suspect. But Jason, an addicted puzzle solver, begins to find the case fascinating. Who'd have thought that George Whitney, an employee of a religious radio station, had it in him to attract a killer. Aided by endearing detective Grace Willis, Jason approaches the sinister secret that made the boring Whitneys so deadly dangerous. And if he is not very careful, that terrible secret could coil back and strike him....

2. Death and the Dogwalker (1990)
   Fred Foret looked so lifelike when Jason Lynx's dog found him dead in a Denver park. Jason, a compulsive puzzle solver, is fascinated and investigates on his own. When beautiful Melody Steinwale's body is also found dead in the park, Jason tries to make the pieces fit. The ugly picture that emerges tells Jason more about himself than he cares to know....

3. Death for Old Times' Sake (1992)
   After compulsive problem-solver Jason Lynx witnesses the murder of Simonetta, an addled old woman, he and his girlfriend Grace, a Denver policewoman, discover that Simonetta was very threatening to someone--and every clue pulls them deeper into her curious past, the entwined destinies of two families, and the dangerous world of the Denver mob. Jason is about to discover that he may be linked to Simonetta on a level far deeper and more tragic than he could have imagined....

4. Looking for the Aardvark (1993)
   Also known as Dead on Sunday.
   In a desolate chapel in the New Mexican desert, the unpopular Reverend Ernie Quivada lies dead, throat slashed, in front of a hypnotic painting of the Madonna and child. Interior designer and private investigator Jason Lynx finds himself drawn to the crime . . . and to Quivada's beautiful widow. Before he knows it, Jason is in over his head, struggling to stay afloat in an investigation whose vicious undertow tugs at his own deepest feelings . . .

5. Long Time Dead (1995)
   |Denver antiques dealer Jason Lynx has a deep interest in answering that question. For the victim was Ron Willis, brother of policewoman Grace Willis, the woman Jason hopes to marry.
   
   There's not much to go on: only Ron's address book and his desperate search for cash the night before his death. Of course there is also the mysterious skeleton that rescue workers find near Ron's body--surprisingly on property belonging to the Credable family, a Denver dynasty built on violence and greed. These days the Credables are the soul of upper-class respectability. Or so it seems.
   
   Goaded by Grace's irrational response to the tragedy, Jason inches toward the truth--about a killer, himself, and the woman he loves....

6. A Death of Innocents (1997)
   When Jason and his wife, Grace, find the remains of a young girl beneath the porch of their beautiful new house, they want answers. The police say she was raped and strangled some twenty years ago, when the wealthy Monmouth family owned the residence. But as Jason and Grace examine a cache of old photos and letters, and get acquainted with some of Denver's reckless rich, a sinister picture clicks into focus. And an old evil takes a new lease on life . . . and death.

Writing as B.J. Oliphant (Mystery)

Shirley McClintock Mystery Series

1. Dead in the Scrub (1990)
   Struggling to put a wounded deer out of its misery, intrepid rancher Shirley McClintock stumbles over a human skeleton half-buried in autumn leaves. Then she discovers a second murder, accomplished with the same arrow that had pierced the body of the deer. The crimes are apparently unrelated, but McClintock catches the same rotten stench in both. Only proof is lacking, but that, when she finds it, cannot be used. Not without putting the person nearest her heart into mortal danger.

2. The Unexpected Corpse (1990)

3. Deservedly Dead (1992)
   The new owner of the Jewell place has drained the wetlands, poisoned the scrub, and destroyed the wildlife. Neighbor Shirley McClintock is just about ready to kill. So when someone does kill the ruthless greenhorn easterner, Shirley is the prize suspect. But she wasn't the only one to bear the deceased a grudge. There is a wealth of suspects -- and Shirley better narrow them down fast, before she takes the rap herself!

4. Death and the Delinquent (1992)
   Shirley McClintock is vacationing in New Mexico with her friend J.Q., her daughter Allison, and Allison's schoolmate April. While exploring a mesa on muleback, a sharpshooter wings Shirley's mule, sending her into the hospital with a crushed knee, and kills April. Down but far from out, Shirley wrestles with a mystery that's as deadly as a rattlesnake . . .

5. Death Served Up Cold (1994)
   When a mysterious guest dies at Shirley McClintock's Santa Fe guest house, the other guests are blissfully unconcerned. The crazy lady in Ditch House goes her crazy way; her drunken companion continues to drink; and the middle-aged pair continue to enjoy the gentle landscape. But Shirley senses something wicked just around the corner. Like cold-blooded murder. And a terrifying evil coming closer and closer to her peaceful abode . . .

6. Ceremonial Death (1996)
   Shadow Dancer Was Readying Her Hogan For A Healing Ceremony -- and Her Own Terrible Death....
   
   And the beautiful cosmic healer, nee Bridget McCree, had not been dead long when her neighbor Shirley McClintock found her viciously mutilated body.
   
   Was the murder the work of extraterrestrials, as recent cattle mutilations in the Santa Fe area are believed to be? Shirley's investigation into Shadow Dancer's torrid romances and tangled family affairs suggests more traditional motivations: greed, lust, and envy.
   
   So after a second sordid killing and sly rumors that Shirley and her family are somehow involved in both crimes, she goes on the warpath: straight toward the unexpected truth and a head-on confrontation with Shadow Dancer's murderous last client...

7. Here's to the Newly Dead (1997)
   They were scarcely more than children, these lovebirds lying dead in a New Mexico canyon. Shirley McClintock, owner of the Santa Fe guest ranch where they were staying, is baffled by the tragedy. Especially when almost everything about the couple turns out to be false, except the thousand-dollar bills they spent so lavishly.
   
   Who were these mysterious newlyweds, and why are so many people looking for them? Shirley finds out the hard way--after more murder and the resurrection of an excruciating tragedy from her own past. . . .

Writing as E E Horlak

• Still Life (1988)
  A darkly shining gem of mystery, terror, and Indian magic.

Writing as Sheri S. Tepper (Science Fiction)

Anthologies

• Night Visions 6 (1988)
  Includes works by F. Paul Wilson, Ray Garton, and Sheri S. Tepper

• The Further Adventures of Joker (1990)

Fiction

• The Revenants (1984)

• After Long Silence (1987)
  Also known as Enigma Score

• The Gate to Women's Country (1988)

• Grass (1989)
  What could be more commonplace than grass, or a world covered over all its surface with a wind-whipped ocean of grass? But the planet Grass conceals horrifying secrets within its endless pastures. And as an incurable plague attacks all inhabited planets but this one, the prairie-like Grass begins to reveal these secrets -- and nothing will ever be the same again . . .

• Raising the Stones (1990)
  When the human settlers arrived on Hobbs Land, the native intelligent specvies, the Owlbrit, were already almost extinct. Before the last one died, a few years later, the humans had learned a little of their language, their ideas and theirb religion. It seemed the natural thing for the settlers to maintain the last Owlbrit temple, with the strange statue that was its God. When when that God died - disintegrating overnight - it seemed equally natural to start preparing its replacement. Maire Manone came to Hobbs Land to escape the harsh patriachal religion of Voorstod, but Voorstod hasn't forgotten her - or forgiven her. But the men who arrive on Hobbs Land to find and return Maire to her homeland haven't taken Hobbs Land's God into account . . .

• Beauty (1991)
  With the  critically acclaimed novels The Gate To  Women's Country, Raising The Stones, and the  Hugo-nominated Grass, Sheri  Tepper has established herself as one of the major  science fiction writers of out Time. In  Beauty, she broadens her territory even  further, with a novel that evokes all the richness of  fairy tale and fable. Drawing on the wellspring  of tales such as "Sleeping Beauty,"  Beauty is a moving novel of love and loss, hope and  despair, magic and nature. Set against a backdrop  both enchanted and frightening, the story begins  with a wicked aunt's curse that will afflict a young  woman named Beauty on her sixteenth birthday.  Though Beauty is able to sidestep tragedy, she soon  finds herself embarked on an adventure of vast  consequences. For it becomes clear that the  enchanted places of this fantastic world--a place not  unlike our own--are in danger and must be saved before  it is too late.

• Sideshow (1992)
  On the planet of Elsewhere, the Council had  always enforced the governing of each province in  the manner the people had chosen, so long as each  respected its neighbors' local customs--and so long  as the people remained within their homelands.  Generations later, inhabitants have begun to question  this tradition. The Council has received  mysterious messages and reports of strange manifestations  across the planet. Now, Enforcer Fringe Owldark has  been sent with a small crew of seven, each  possessing an unusual talent, to investigate their worst  fear--the arrival of the Hobbs Land gods. Free will  and the reality of God are just too of the  timeless issues this courageous band of humans must  confront as they strive to decide if complete tolerance  and leaving others alone is evil. . .and what they  should do if it is. Vividly imagined and  exquisitely rendered, Sideshow is Sheri S. Tepper's most  controversial novel yet.

• A Plague of Angels (1993)
  Atop a twisting,  canyon-climbing road, a witch lurks in a fortress  built strong to keep out dragons and ogres. In  another part of the countryside, a young orphan is  maturing into a beautiful woman in the enchanted  village that is her home. Somewhere nearby, a young man  is seeking adventure after running away from his  family's small farm. Suddenly a strange and  terrible prophecy sets off a chain of events that will  bring these three together in the heroic, romantic,  and thrilling tale of an age-old battle.

• Shadow's End (1994)

• Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1996)
  A wave of fundamentalism is sweeping across the globe as the millennium approaches, and a power-hungry  presidential candidate sees his ticket to success in making an example out of a teenage girl who abandoned her infant in a Dumpster. Taking the girl's case is Carolyn Crespin, a former attorney, who left her job for a quiet family life. Now she must call upon five friends from college, who took a vow to always stand together. But their success might depend on the assistance of Sophy, the enigmatic sixth friend, whom they all believed dead.

• The Family Tree (1997)
  Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.
  
  And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.
  
  A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The bearer Dora gets to a murderer--and to the truth--the more seemingly disparate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in afar distant future. . .one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.
  
  An exhilarating and enchanting novel that deftly combines fantastic invention with insight and a social conscience, from one of the most lyrical and important voices in contemporary speculative fiction.

• Six Moon Dance (1998)
  It was many years ago that humans came and settled the world of Newholme-cruelly bending the planet to their will; setting down roots and raising up cities and farms and a grand temple to their goddess.But now the ground itself is shaking with ever-increasing violence. And the Great Questioner, official arbiter of the Council of Worlds, has come to this isolated orb to investigate rumors of a terrible secret that lies buried deep within Newholme's past--a past that is not dead, not completely. And it will fall to Mouche, a beautiful youth of uncommon cleverness and spirit, to save his imperiled home by dicovering and embracing that which makes him unique among humans. For every living thing on newholme is doomed, unless Mouche can appease something dark and terrible that is coiled within...and surrender to the mysterious ecstatic revelry taht results when the six moons join.

• Singer from the Sea (1999)
  A good and proper aristocrat on the isolated, seemingly backward planet of Haven, Genevieve has been carefully instructed in the Covenants -- the ancient, inflexible laws governing the women of her class. She knows what is expected of her: marriage in her mid-twenties to a groom of her father's choosing, childbirth at age thirty. And then soon afterwards -- as has been the lot of so many noblewomen before her -- perhaps death.
  
  But there is another Genevieve within who longs to heed the call of the sea -- though she has never once seen the vast waters that cover most of her homeworld's surface. For an unheard voice is crying out to her across the centuries, drawing her ever-closer to a terrible truth hidden beneath a smoke screen of rules, tradition, and propriety. And it is Genevieve who must fulfill a forgotten destiny -- something inborn passed for untold generations from daughter to daughter -- or she and the entire civilization of Haven will be swept away on a cosmic wave of oblivion.

• The Fresco (2000)
  The bizarre events that have been occuring across the United States -- unexplained "oddities" tracked by Air Defense, mysterious disappearances, shocking deaths -- seem to have no bearing on Benita Alvarez-Shipton's life. That is, until the soft-spoken thirty-six-year-old bookstore manager is approached by a pair of aliens asking her to transmit their message of peace to the powers in Washington. An abused Albuquerque wife with low self-esteem, Benita has been chosen to act as the sole liaison between the human race and the Pistach, who have offered their human hosts a spectacular opportunity for knowledge and enrichment.
  
  But ultimately Benita will be called upon to do much more than deliver messages -- and may, in fact, be responsible for saving the Earth. Because the Pistach are not the only space-faring species currently making their presence known on her unsuspecting planet. And the others are not so benevolent.

• The Visitor (2002)
  The "magic" that once was America died horribly along with most of the Earth's inhabitants when an asteroid crashed into the planet sometime during the twenty-first century. Hundreds of years have passed, and all that remains of the time before are fragmented memories distorted by superstition -- as a tragically reduced populace suffers greatly under the tyranny of a repressive ruling order. But destiny has chosen Dismé Latimer to lead a wasted world out of the darkness ... with a book. Written by a courageous scientist ancestor, it is a sacred, unsettling tome rife with disturbing ideas and revelations ... and an impossible hope that compels a gentle, troubled young woman to abandon her abusive home in search of truth and her true self. But common "wisdom" and lore warn of grave dangers out in the world. Evil is there, a malevolence beyond imagining. And in the depths of the Earth, a gargantuan beast asleep for centuries has begun to stir ...

• The Companions (2003)
  Three planets have been recently discovered in deep space, and prosaically named to reflect their respective environments. Jungle, lush and foreboding, swallowed up an eleven-member exploratory team more than a decade earlier, while hot, harsh, and dusty Stone turned out to be phenomenally rich in rare ore, the most profitable new world to be found in a century. But it is the third, Moss, that could well prove to be the most enigmatic . . . and dangerous.
  
  Enlisted by the Planetary Protection Institute -- an organization founded to assess new worlds for potential development and profit -- famed linguist Paul Delis has come to Moss to determine whether the strange multicolored shapes of dancing light observed on the planet's surface are evidence of intelligent life. With Delis is his half sister, Jewel, the wife of one of the explorers lost on Jungle. Working together, they are to determine the true nature of the “Mossen” and decipher the strange "language" that accompanies the phenomenon.
  
  Yet the great mysteries of this bucolic world -- three-quarters covered in wind-sculpted, ever-shifting moss -- don't end with the inexplicable illuminations; there is the puzzle of the rusting remains of a lost fleet of Earth ships, moldering on a distant plateau. Perhaps the biggest question mark is Jewel Delis herself and her mission here at the far reaches of the galaxy. Leaving an overpopulated homeworld that is rapidly becoming depleted of the raw materials needed for human survival, Jewel is a member of a radical underground group opposing a recent government edict that will eliminate all of the planet's “nonessential” living inhabitants. And it is here, at the universe's unexplored edge, where the fate of endangered creatures may ultimately be decided -- though it will mean defying ruthless and unforgiving ruling powers to repair humankind's disintegrating relationship with the beasts of the Earth.

• The Margarets (2007)
  Earth is in crisis, virtually destroyed by overpopulation, and mankind is teethering on the edge. ISTO - the Interstellar Trade Organization - had demanded man's extinction, for a living planet is more important than any race upon it, and was about to start 'reducing' mankind when Earthgov agreed its demands, to sell 90 per cent of Earth's inhabitants into bondage to alien races. When Margaret is six, she imagines herself as a spy, a healer, a queen, a warrior, even a boy, to amuse herself; when she is nine, and 12, and 20, at crisis points in her life, she feels like parts of her have split off - like the Margaret who decided to follow her lover to Tercis and the Margaret who said no. So now, as well as Margaret, she is Wilvia, learning to be a queen on B'yurngrad, and Ongamar, a spy on Cantardene, and Gretamara, a healer on Chottem, and even Naumi, a boy on Thairy, and she is many other Margarets besides. And all these Margarets hold the key to mankind's survival, if only they can survive and come together again as one Margaret, with all their different powers intact . . .

Novels

Series

The Awakeners

1. Northshore (1987)

2. Southshore (1987)

• Omnibus:  The Awakeners (1988)

Ettison

1. Blood Heritage (1986)

2. The Bones (1987)

Jinian

1. Jinian Footseer (1985)

2. Dervish Daughter (1986)

3. Jinian Star-Eye (1986)

• Omnibus:  The End of the Game (1986)

Land of the True Game

1. King's Blood Four (1983)

2. Necromancer Nine (1983)

3. Wizards Eleven (1984)

• Omnibus:  The True Game (1985)
  In the lands of the True Game, your lifelong identity emerges as you play-Prince or Sorcerer, Demon or Doyen. Raising the dead is the least of the Necromancer's Talents-he is a wild card who threatens the True Game itself. A giant stalks the mountains. Shadowpeople gather by the light of the moon. Bonedancers raise up armies of the dead. And the Wizard's Eleven sleep trapped in their dreams. Players, take your places. The final Game begins now...

Marianne

1. Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore (1985)

2. Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods (1988)

3. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989)

• Omnibus:  The Marianne Trilogy (1990)

Mavin Manyshaped

1. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

2. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

3. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)