Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

1947-

Reviewed by
Kelly Lasiter

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough also writes science fiction with Anne McCaffrey. She won a Nebula award for The Healer's War in 1990. You can read her comments about her novels at Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's website.

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Argonia — (1982-1985) Publisher: Maggie Brown was a hearthwitch, good at whipping up banquets and starting up fires. But her magic was not much good for tracking down her faery step-sister who'd run away with a gypsy. So she set out with Ching, the talking cat, and Colin Songsmith, a travelling minstrel, to bring back the beautiful Amberwine.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Argonia 1. Song of Sorcery 2. Bronwyn's Bane 3. The Unicorn Creed 4. The Christening Quest

The Songkiller — (1991-1992)

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Songkiller 1. Phantom Banjo 2. Picking the Ballad's Bones 3. Strum Again?

The Godmother — (1994-1998) Publisher: Donning a crystal pendant of unsuspected power and wishing for a fairy godmother who will save all of Seattle, social worker Rose Samson is amazed by the prompt arrival of the silver-haired Felicity Fortune and her magical powers.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough 1. The Godmother 2. The Godmother's Apprentice 3. The Godmother's Web book review

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough 1. The Godmother 2. The Godmother's Apprentice 3. The Godmother's Web

The Godmother

In traditional fairy tales, fairy godmothers show up when they are least expected but most needed, to right wrongs and assist those in peril. Enter Felicity Fortune. Summoned to Seattle by a sweet but burned-out young social worker named Rose, she sets out to solve problems both modern and ageless with magic and kindness.

Felicity discovers many young people in danger in the city. Hank and Gigi have been abandoned by their mother and kidnapped by a child molester. Cindy has just been fired from her job by her own stepsisters and booted out of her family home. Snohomish is hiding in the woods from a hit man hired by her jealous supermodel stepmom. Dico is living on the streets, unable to get any breaks... until he meets a magic cat. Any of this sound familiar? ;)

In this entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking novel, we see that today's problems are not as new as we might think, echoing situations that have appeared in folktales for hundreds of years, and we learn that a little kindness goes a long way. One caveat: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough can get a little sledgehammer-ish with her political views. I tend to agree with her politics, but even to me, the character of Rose sometimes sounds more like an editorial than a normal human being making conversation. Still, I found this relatively easy to overlook.

I recommend The Godmother to anyone who likes retold fairy tales with a dash of social consciousness. —Kelly Lasiter

Nothing Sacred & Last Refuge — (1991-1992) Young adult. Taken prisoner when her plane is shot down over the Himalayas, Viveka Vanachek arrives at a secret POW camp where time has no meaning and the lines between captive and captor begin to blur.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Nothing Sacred Last Refuge

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Nothing Sacred Last Refuge book review

Stand-alone novels:

The Harem of Aman Akbar — (1984)

The Drastic Dragon of Draco, Texas — (1986) Publisher: A madcap new fantasy adventure!

The Goldcamp Vampire — (1987) Publisher: A high-spirited fantasy adventure!

The Healer's War — (1988) Won a 1990 Nebula Award. Publisher: Although perhaps best-known for her lightly humorous fantasies and for her collaborations with Anne McCaffrey on the Petaybee series and the Acorna series, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough has also written Healer's War, a classic novel of the Vietnam War, enriched with a magical, mystical twist, which won the 1989 Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1988. The Minneapolis Star Tribune called it "A brutal and beautiful book." Scarborough herself was a nurse in Vietnam during the war and she draws on her own personal experiences to create the central character, Lt. Kitty McCulley. McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians whom she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet, given to her by one of her patients, an elderly, dying Vietnamese holy man, which allows her to see other people's "auras" and to understand more about them as a result. This eventually leads to a strange, almost surrealistic journey through the jungle, accompanied by a one-legged boy and a battle-seasoned but crazed soldier and, by the end of the journey, McCulley has found herself and a way to live and survive through the madness and destruction.

Carol for Another Christmas — (1996) Publisher: Monica Banks is a workaholic. There's no room in her life for home, family, or love. Until on snowy night when a ghost from Christmas past — a spirit named Ebenezer Scrooge — appears to take her on a journey through her own life to teach her that it's never to late to let the joy of the season into our heart...

The Lady in the Loch — (1998) Publisher: In a novel encompassing historical fact, science fiction, folklore, and intrigue, the newly-appointed sheriff of Edinburgh, Scotland, is confronted with the strange slayings of gypsy women, murders that hint of black magic.

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