Sheri S. Tepper

Gibbon's Decline and Fall
A group of six women make a pact when they were students together in the heady sixties, vowing that each of them would find a place to stand where she could be woman as woman was meant to be, and thereafter she would never decline or fall from that place.
	Fast forward to the year 2000: a ruthless politician is amassing a terrifying, fanatical power base; the suicide rate has gone through the roof . . . and the global birthrate has suddenly plummeted to near zero. Something evil is threatening the world. Of the six extraordinary women forming the Decline and Fall Club, five remain. The sixth, Sophy, disappeared three years before, her dazzling, unearthly beauty undiminished — and her early life still as mysterious as her apparent end. Her friends come to see that unlocking the secret to Sophy’s disappearance will be the key to the survival of humanity
With each new novel, Sheri Tepper’s devoted following has grown as more and more readers discover this remarkable talent. Her richly imagined future worlds are filled with unforgettable characters, exotic backdrops and epic adventures. In Gibbon’s Decline and Fall she outdoes herself, proving yet again why Analog dubs her ‘one of the greats of literature’.
The True Game
	‘Tepper’s stories are.. .the kind that wrap you in their embrace, that take over your life, that make the world disappear."—The Village Voice "Moves with all the precision of a chess game with fate!" —ROGER ZELAZNY "Tepper takes the traditional icons of fantasy, restores their resonance, and makes them her own." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Tepper is as successful in bringing to life intelligent aliens as she is in creating believable human characters." —New York Times Book Review
"Tepper’s talent for creating evocative alien landscapes reinforces the depth of her insights into the complexities of human society and the human heart ."—Library Journal
Beauty
	On her sixteenth birthday, Beauty, daughter of the Duke of Westfaire, sidesteps the sleeping curse placed upon her by her wicked aunt - only to be kidnapped by voyeurs from another time and place, far from the picturesque castle in 14th century England. She is taken to a world of the future, a savage society where, even among the teeming billions, she is utterly alone. Here her adventures begin. As she travels magically through time to visit places both imaginary and real she eventually comes to understand her special place in humanity's destiny.
Gate to Women's Country
	Since the flames died three hundred years ago, human civilization has evolved into a dual society: Women’s Country, where walled towns enclose what’s left of past civilization, nurtured by women and a few nonviolent men: and the adjacent garrisons where warrior men live—the lost brothers, sons, and lovers of those in Women’s Country. Two societies. Two competing dreams. Two ways of life, kept apart by walls stronger than stone. And yet there is a gate between them.... Tepper not only keeps us reading... she provokes a new look at the old issues.’ —The Washington Post
‘Tepper's cast of both ordinary and extraordinary people play out a powerful drama whose significance goes beyond sex to deal with the toughest problem of all. the challenge of surmounting humanity’s most dangerous flaws so we can survive—despite ourselves.’—Locus
Lively, thought-provoking., the plot is ingenious, packing a wallop of a surprise . Tepper knows how to write a well-made, on-moving story with strong characters .... She takes the mental risks that are the lifeblood of science fiction and all imaginative narrative." —Ursula K. LeGuin. Los Angeles Times
Sideshow
	Barbaric customs and bizarre human cults are preserved on the planet Elsewhere. The rest of the universe has been taken over by the Hobbs Land Gods, which means that everyone alive, except the people on Elsewhere, lives in perfect harmony with nature and eachother. But Elsewhere is ruled by computer encrypted professors who have been dead for a thousand years. The professors were dedicated to maintaining human diversity. Their ancient analogs are dedicated to something infinitely more sinister.
The time has come to consider whether enslavement by the Hobbs Land Gods is not preferable to the depravity being cultivated on Elsewhere. The time has come to ask the Big Question, What is the Destiny of Man? And answer it.
The Family Tree
Dora Henry is an ordinary woman living in an extraordinary time. Recently separated from an odd and distant husband, Dora looks back wistfully to when she was a little girl, to the times when the world was a simpler, greener place. But the once-fertile Earth of Dora’s childhood has been overdeveloped. Now Nature, apparently, has decided to fight back.
As a police officer, Dora must investigate the bizarre, seemingly unrelated murders of three geneticists. In the course of her inquiry, however, it becomes clear that the scientists were killed by the same person, for reasons that are frustratingly obscure. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere Dora turns: weeds are becoming trees, trees becoming forests, a city is transformed almost overnight into a wild and verdant place inhospitable to what humankind has become.
	Within days, Dora’s hometown has come to a veritable standstill as the thoroughfares are choked by foliage, and its citizens are forced to employ bygone means of transport and communication—walking and talking. But stranger still, Dora discovers that she herself can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora—and is, therefore, perhaps the only person presently living who holds the key to averting an unthinkable catastrophe to human life. As Dora tracks the elusive murderer, the mystery of the trees begins to unravel as well. For the two seemingly disparate events are intertwined, much like the branches of an oak. And, as Dora gets closer to the truth, she comes to realise that the answer she seeks today may lie in the future—a future which is much closer than anyone dares think.
An inspired, thought-provoking novel of infinite surprise, unrestrained brilliance and mind-blowing imagination, The Family Tree is a tour de force from Sheri S. Tepper, proving once again why she is one of the most highly praised and beloved storytellers writing today.

Shadow's End
ALLIANCE CENTRAL: the world once called Earth. Nothing breathes upon it but man and the wind, and the wind is tamed beneath great domes. From here humanity rules a vast stellar empire.
FIRSTISM: the belief that the universe is made for humanity. Therefore be fruitful, and multiply, and replace all other creatures with humankind and its domesticated beasts, and replace all other green things with those plants useful to human life.
HERMES SECTOR: the remote frontier system where colonists are abruptly wiped out by an alien visitation. As a deadly threat to the countless billions of humans swarming outward from Alliance Central, the aliens must be identified.
	One planet alone in Hermes Sector was spared. But that planet is Dinadh, the strangest and most secretive of all populated worlds. Firsters are not welcome on Dinadh, nor Firster technology. The only people from Alliance Central qualified by blood to visit Dinadh are a lone woman and her severely disabled five-year-old son. Their journey to Dinadh marks the beginning of a terrifying ordeal pitching mother and son beyond the shadow cast by human civilisation. Astounding insights, extraordinary aliens and colossal dangers await them, in a novel of enormous power and unparalleled invention.

Singer from the Sea
	Sheri S. Tepper has crafted a far-future fantasy that reads like the best of whodunits: murder, religion, treason, a mysterious ailment called batfly fever, interplanetary spies, true love, and planetary consciousness are the strands that make up this colorful tale. She limns the culture of this new world so skillfully that the reader never has cause to doubt its 1000-year history.

Six Moon Dance
	"A profound ecological and sociological commentary on human individuality...ambitiously choreographed and executed without a misstep... Tepper deftly conjoins a superb awareness of otherness with penetrating insight into selfhood in this shining, bravura performance." Publishers Weekly