LAVISH PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS NOVELS BY SHERI S. TEPPER

RAISING THE STONES
"Tepper effectively combines satire... inventive social engineering, strong main characters, and a plot that works in what may be her best novel to date."
- Kirkus Reviews
"Secure in technique, incandescent in conception, and profound in insight."
- Stephen R. Donaldson

GRASS
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK AND FINALIST FOR THE HUGO AWARD
"A splendid achievement, one of the most satisfying science fiction novels I have read in years."
- New York Times Book Review
"Tepper is a wide and subtle artist."
- Washington Post Book World

THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY
"It's grand...  One of the most involving, serious and deeply felt studies of the relations between the sexes that I have ever read, and then some."
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
"Lively, thought provoking...  Tepper takes the mental risks that are the lifeblood of science fiction and all imaginative narrative."
- Ursula K. Le Guinn, Los Angeles Time

Left Flap:
BEAUTY

With the publication of The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri S. Tepper came to be recognized as a major science fiction writer.  Now the author of Raising the Stones and Grass - turns to Beauty, a fantasy with a story that is more, much more than fable.

Drawing on the wellspring of much-loved, well-remembered fairy tales, Tepper delivers a thought-provoking, finely crafted, and moving novel of love and loss, hope and despair, magic and nature.  Set against backdrops both enchanted and horrific, the story thoroughly involved the reader in the life of Beauty, one of the most captivating heroines in modern fantasy.

Almost from birth, Beauty has possessed a certain quality, something special that sets her apart from others.  Even when her wicked aunt's curse is fulfilled on Beauty's sixteenth birthday, she is seemingly able to sidestep the tragedy.  Instead, Beauty finds herself transported to a world of the future, where she is surely alone though amid millions upon millions of humans.  Here her adventures begin as she travels magically though time to visit places both  imaginary and real.  Finally, she comes to understand what has been her special gift to humanity all along.

For in Beauty, there is beauty.  And in beauty, magic.  Without our enchanted places, our Faery Lands, humanity is no more than an upstart ape...  And this we realize is why Beauty must be saved, both in the fantastic world of Tepper's novel and in the actual world in which we live.

Back Flap:

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

During the last few years we've all been made increasingly aware of the destruction of habitat that's been going on all over the world - in rainforests, wetlands, deserts, the high tundra.  We see it on television and read about it in the nature magazines.  When I drive from Denver down to Santa Fe, I see the river valley where I grew up now packed with houses cheek by jowl.  There used to be cattail swamps along there, and I remember lying for hours on my belly in the tall grass looking for whatever it was that sounded like a plumber's plunger being squooshed.  The bird was a least bittern, but there aren't any swamp birds there anymore because the swamps have all been drained and the trees cut down to build a golf course.  The sloping wildflower-filled meadows where I used to hunt Indian arrowheads were first rutted and destroyed by off-road vehicles and then turned into a trailer park.  And on TV I see trees falling in Brazil, and wetlands turned into marinas in Florida, and deserts creeping into places grasslands used to be in Africa.

It seems to me sometimes that all beauty is dying.  Which makes me hope that perhaps it isn't dead but only sleeping.  And what makes me think of Sleeping Beauty and wonder if - Beauty, that is - might not be a metaphor for what is happening to the world at large: perfect Beauty born, Beauty cursed with death, Beauty dying - but with the magical hope of being reawakened, maybe by love.

The result of all this Beauty, a novel of human spirit, a book-length faery tale, a meditation on various questions of religion - or maybe just a prayer...

Jacket border © 1991 Joseph Scrofani
Handlettering © 1991 Ron Zinn
Jacket design by Jamie S. Warren Youll