A Trail of Fire (52 page)
Authors: Diana Gabaldon
Outlander
(aka
Cross Stitch
) (BEB) – If you’ve never read any of the series, I’d suggest starting here. If you’re unsure about it, open the book anywhere and read three pages; if you can put it down again, I’ll give you a dollar.
Dragonfly in Amber
(BEB) – It doesn’t start where you think it’s going to. And it doesn’t end how you think it’s going to, either. Just keep reading; it’ll be fine.
Voyager
(BEB) – This one won an award from
EW
magazine for ‘Best Opening Line.’ (To save you having to find a copy just to read the opening, it was: ‘He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd, in the circumstances.’) If you’re reading the series in order, rather than piece-meal, you do want to read this book before tackling the SLINs and Bulges.
Lord John and the Hand of Devils
(‘Hell-Fire Club’) (BULGE) – Just to add an extra layer of confusion, this (
Hand of Devils
) is a SLIN that includes three Bulges (novellas). The first story in this book, ‘Hell-fire Club,’ is set in London in 1757, and deals with a red-haired man who approaches Lord John Grey with an urgent plea for help, just before dying in front of him. [Originally published in the anthology PAST POISONS (ed. Maxim Jakubowski, 1998).]
Lord John and the Private Matter
(SLIN) – Set in London, 1757, this is a historical mystery steeped in blood and even less-savoury substances, in which Lord John meets (in short order) a valet, a traitor, an apothecary with a sure cure for syphilis, a bumptious German, and an unscrupulous merchant prince.
Hand of Devils
(‘Succubus’) (BULGE) – The second novella in the
Hand of Devils
collection finds Lord John in Germany, having unsettling dreams about Jamie Fraser, unsettling encounters with Saxon princesses, night-hags, and a really disturbing encounter with a big, blond Hanoverian graf. [Originally published in the anthology LEGENDS II, ed. Robert Silverberg, 2004.]
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
(SLIN) – The second full-length novel focused on Lord John (but it does include Jamie Fraser) is set in 1759, deals with a twenty-year-old family scandal, and sees Lord John engaged at close range with exploding cannon and even more dangerously explosive emotions.
Hand of Devils
(‘Haunted Soldier’) (BULGE) – 1759, London and the Woolwich Arsenal. In which Lord John faces a court of inquiry into the explosion of a cannon, and learns that there are more dangerous things in the world than gunpowder.
The Scottish Prisoner
(SLIN) – This one’s set in 1760, in the Lake District, London, and Ireland. A sort of hybrid novel, it’s divided evenly between Jamie Fraser and Lord John Grey, who are recounting their different perspectives on a tale of politics, corruptions, murder, opium dreams, horses and illegitimate sons.
Drums of Autumn
(BEB) – This one begins in 1766, in the New World, where Jamie and Claire find a foothold in the mountains of North Carolina, and their daughter Brianna finds a whole lot of things she didn’t expect, when a sinister newspaper clipping sends her in search of her parents.
The Fiery Cross
(BEB) – Late 1760s. The historical background to this one is the War of the Regulation in North Carolina, which was more or less a dress rehearsal for the oncoming Revolution. In which Jamie Fraser becomes a reluctant Rebel, his wife Claire becomes a conjure-woman, and meets a ghost. Something Much Worse happens to Brianna’s husband Roger, but I’m not telling you what. This one’s won several awards for ‘Best Last Line,’ but I’m not telling you that, either.
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
(BEB) – Early-to-mid 1770s. Winner of the 2006 Corine International Prize for Fiction, and a Quill Award (this book beat books by both George R.R. Martin
and
Stephen King, which I thought Very Entertaining Indeed). All the books have an internal ‘shape’ that I see while I’m writing them. This one looks like the Hokusai print titled ‘The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.’ Think
tsunami
– twice.
An Echo in the Bone
(BEB) – 1777–1778, America, London, Canada, and Scotland. The cover image on this reflects the internal shape of the book: a caltrop. That’s an ancient military weapon that looks like a child’s jack with sharp points; the Romans used them to deter elephants, and the Highway Patrol still uses them to stop fleeing perps in cars. This book has four major storylines: Jamie and Claire; Roger and Brianna (and family); Lord John and William; and Young Ian, all intersecting in the nexus of the American Revolution – and all of them with sharp points.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
(BEB) – The eighth of the Big Enormous Books, this will probably be published in 2013. It begins where
An Echo in the Bone
leaves off, in summer of 1778 (and the autumn of 1974).
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows
(BULGE) – Set (mostly) in 1940/42, this is the story of What Really Happened to Roger MacKenzie’s parents. [Originally published in the anthology
Songs of Love and Death
(ed. George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, 2010).]
The Space Between
(BULGE) – Set mostly in Paris, 1778, this novella deals with Michael Murray (Young Ian’s elder brother), Joan MacKimmie (Marsali’s younger sister), the Comte St Germain (who is Not Dead After All), Mother Hildegarde, and a few other persons of interest. The space between
what?
It depends who you’re talking to. [To be published in early 2013 in the anthology THE MAD SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION, ed. John Joseph Adams.]
Virgins
(BULGE) – Set in 1740, in France. In which Jamie Fraser (aged 19) and his friend Ian Murray (aged 20) become young mercenaries. [To be published in late 2012, in the anthology DANGEROUS WOMEN, ed. George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.]
NOW REMEMBER . . .
You can read the SLINs and Bulges by themselves, or in any order you like. I would recommend reading the BEBs in order, though.
Additional copyright details
Lord John and the Plague of Zombies
was first published in
Down These Strange Streets
, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, October 2011© Diana Gabaldon 2011
The Custom of the Army
was first published as
Lord John and the Custom of the Army
in
Warriors
(vol. 1), edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, March 2011 © Diana Gabaldon 2011
Endnote
1
According to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a short story is something containing fewer than 17,500 words, while a novella is a story between 17,501 and 40,000 words. Anything bigger than 40,000 words is technically a novel. By
some
people’s standards.
Also by Diana Gabaldon
Outlander
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
An Echo in the Bone
The Outlandish Companion
(non-fiction)
Lord John and the Hellfire Club
(novella)
Lord John and the Private Matter
Lord John and the Succubus
(novella)
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Lord John and the Haunted Soldier
(novella)
Custom of the Army
(novella)
Lord John and the Hand of Devils
(collected novellas)
The Scottish Prisoner
Plague of Zombies
(novella)
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2012 by Orion Books.
Copyright for this collection © Diana Gabaldon 2012
Lord John and the Plague of Zombies
was first published in
Down These Strange Streets
, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, October 2011 © Diana Gabaldon 2011
The Custom of the Army
was first published as
Lord John and the Custom of the Army
in
Warriors
(vol. 1), edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, March 2011 © Diana Gabaldon 2011
The right of Diana Gabaldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 4449 6
Orion Books
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
Table of Contents
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows
Lord John and the Plague of Zombies
Chronology of the Outlander series