Storyteller Series by Sue Harrison

From the acclaimed, bestselling author of "Mother Earth Father Sky" comes an extraordinary new novel of courage and human conflict in a prehistoric wilderness of ice and snow. Eighty centuries before our time -- in the frozen interior of a place that would someday be called Alaska -- a clubfooted babe was left in the snow to die...until he was rescued by a young woman ravaged by her enemies and sworn to vengeance... moreFrom the acclaimed, bestselling author of "Mother Earth Father Sky" comes an extraordinary new novel of courage and human conflict in a prehistoric wilderness of ice and snow. Eighty centuries before our time -- in the frozen interior of a place that would someday be called Alaska -- a clubfooted babe was left in the snow to die...until he was rescued by a young woman ravaged by her enemies and sworn to vengeance.Twenty years later, the child, called Chakliux, has grown to manhood and occupies an honored place as his tribe's treasured storyteller, while his adoptive mother K'os has grown cunning and cold. But in the neighboring village of the Near River People -- where he has been sent to make peace by wedding the shaman's daughter -- a shocking double murder occurs that sets Chakliux on a remarkable journey. Driven by the ancient songs of sea and sky, earth and animals, the storyteller traverses a harsh, unknown, yet enthralling landscape in search of the strange truth about the offenses for which his people have suffered...and about the hateful, ambitious woman who raised him, who may be his most dangerous enemy of all. less

Winter looms in this place of icy splendor near the top of the world-chilling a heart already frozen by hatred and cold dreams of revenge?Experience and adversity have made the storyteller Chakliux a wise and powerful hunter and a man of great respect. But a tender heart is his weakness. In his village lives the beautiful Aqamdax for whom he yearns, though she is mated to a cruel and dangerous tribesman she does not love... moreWinter looms in this place of icy splendor near the top of the world-chilling a heart already frozen by hatred and cold dreams of revenge?Experience and adversity have made the storyteller Chakliux a wise and powerful hunter and a man of great respect. But a tender heart is his weakness. In his village lives the beautiful Aqamdax for whom he yearns, though she is mated to a cruel and dangerous tribesman she does not love. It is Chakliux she runs to under a clear, moonlit sky while the village sleeps. But there can be no future for them together until a curse upon their people has been transcended. And then there is K'os, the healing woman--maddened and embittered by the outrage she was forced to endure years earlier--outcast and enslaved by the leader of the enemy tribe against whom she has sworn vengeance. To enact her savage and terrible justice, she will use--and destroy--anyone, if necessary, including the boy-turned-man she rescued in infancy and raised as her son: Chakliux, the storyteller.Return now to a frozen land in a remarkable time eighty centuries past, when the spirit was tested--and strengthened--by the cruelties of nature and the great mysteries of life. less

On that day of great terror and sadness, the girl called Daughter escaped with her grandfather across the icy North Pacific to find shelter on the islands of the Whale Hunters. But peace was not to be their lot. For here the mad medicine woman K'os was scheming vengeance against her most despised enemy, the revered warrior and statesman called Chakliux -- her son... moreOn that day of great terror and sadness, the girl called Daughter escaped with her grandfather across the icy North Pacific to find shelter on the islands of the Whale Hunters. But peace was not to be their lot. For here the mad medicine woman K'os was scheming vengeance against her most despised enemy, the revered warrior and statesman called Chakliux -- her son. And this young, innocent female from a far-off place was the key -- the final, essential ingredient in a demonic brew of suspicion, hostility, and forbidden love that K'os would prepare with an expert hand ... to poison the lives of those she hated and would see dead. less