Outlander Series by
Diana Gabaldon
Books in order of publication:
| "Outlander" | "Dragonfly in Amber" |
| "Voyager" | "Drums of Autumn" | "Outlandish Companion" | "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" |
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"Outlander"
Delacorte, 1991, HC
In 1945, Claire Beauchamp Randall, a former combat nurse, is reunited in Scotland with her husband on a second honeymoon. Like most practical women, Claire hardly expects her curiosity to get the better of her. But when she innocently touches one of the boulders in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles she is hurtled backward in time more than 200 years, to the year of our Lord...1743. Claire's usual resourcefulness is tested to the limit, when the first person she meets is a merciless English garrison captain feared and despised by others bears a disturbing resemblance to the husband she left behind in the future. Finding herself in a time boiling with rumors of the Jacobite Pretender's Rising, beset with ignorance and superstition, ravaged by pestilence and disease, she is forced to marry Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, for her own protection. Sworn by his wedding vows to protect her from harm, Jamie's passion goes beyond duty. Claire also experiences a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that she becomes a woman torn between the husband in the future she unwittingly left and the husband in the past she now lives.
"Dragonfly in Amber"
Delacorte, August 1992, HC
Claire Randall has returned to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills, with her daughter Brianna, to reveal secrets keep for too long. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of Jamie Fraser. Believing him dead she returns to her own time pregnant and brutalized by her trip through the standing stones, she makes a new life for herself, training to become a doctor and raising her daughter. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her, and her body still cries out for him in her dreams. Before Claire can tell her daughter the truth about her birth, she must know once and for all if Jamie and his men died on Culloden Moor. With the help of Roger MacKenzie Wakefield, she discovers that not only did all the men survive the battle but so did Jamie. Discovering Jamie's survival, she is torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite -- or forever doom -- her timeless love.
"Voyager"
Delacorte, January 1994, HC
Learning that Jamie survived the Battle of Culloden, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser decides to take the risk of another trip through the standing stones, a trip that easily could be fatal. But she is torn. Will she be able to find Jamie? And how is she going to leave Brianna, knowing that they will never see each other again? The biggest question, what might be left of the love they shared, when he passage of time will surely have changed him too? But hope makes things possible. For the second time, Claire seeks her destiny with Jamie Fraser. Their adventures take them from the battlefields of Jacobite Scotland to the exotic West Indies, in league with highland smugglers and Caribbean pirates and face-to-face with political intrigue and dark mysteries of voodoo magic.
"Drums of Autumn"
Delacorte, January 1997, HC
Cast ashore in the American colonies, the Fraser's are faced with a bleak choice: return to a Scotland fallen into famine and poverty, or seize the risky chance of a new life in the New World--menaced by Claire's certain knowledge of the coming Revolution. Still, a highlander is born to risk--and so is a time-traveler. Their daughter, Brianna, is safe -- they think -- on the other side of a dangerous future; their lives are their own to venture as they will. With faith in themselves and in each other, they seek a new beginning among the exiled Scottish Highlanders of the Cape Fear, in the fertile river valleys of the Colony of North Carolina. Even in the New World, though, the Fraser's find their hope of peace threatened from without and within; by the British Crown and by Jamie's aunt, Jocasta MacKenzie, last of the MacKenzie's of Leoch. A hunger for freedom drives Jamie to a Highlander's only true refuge: the mountains. And here at last, with no challenge to their peace -- save wild animals, Indians, and the threat of starvation -- the Fraser's establish a precarious foothold in the wilderness, secure in the knowledge that even war cannot invade their mountain sanctuary. But history spares no one, and when Brianna follows her mother into the past, not even the mountains can shelter a Highlander. For Brianna too has an urgent quest: not only to find the mother she has lost and the father she has never met, but to save them both from a future that only she can see.
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"Outlandish Companion"
Delacorte Press, June 1999, HC
Diana Gabaldon has written the ultimate companion guide to her bestselling series, the book only she could write - a beautifully illustrated compendium of all things Outlandish. Included is the story of how Diana came to write the series, synopses of the four published books, a comprehensive, alphabetical cast of characters, with capsule descriptions; a Gaelic (and other foreign term) glossary and pronunciation guide; illustrations of buildings, jewelry and weapons; maps, family trees, an annotated bibliography, essays on botanical medicine, White Ladies, historical research methods; a FAQ section, plus another dealing with controversies roused by the books; appendices on genealogical research, Gaelic and Scots dialect, poems and quotations used in the books, and The Methadone List (a list of some of my favorite books). Also, The Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel, and discussions and excerpts of forth-coming books.
"A Breath of Snow and Ashes"
Delacorte Press, September 2005, HC
About this title: Eagerly anticipated by her legions of fans, this sixth novel in Diana Gabaldon's bestselling Outlander saga is a masterpiece of historical fiction from one of the most popular authors of our time. Now, "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.
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