About the Author

Peter S. Beagle is the internationally-bestselling author of the fantasy classic, The Last Unicorn, which has sold over five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, Tamsin, and most recently, Summerlong and In Calabria. His short fiction collections include The Line Between and Sleight of Hand. Beagle is also the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and The New Voices of Fantasy (with Jacob Weisman). His screenwriting credits include Star Trek and the animated films of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn.

Beagle has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards, as well as lifetime achievement awards from Comic-Con and the World Fantasy Convention. He lives in Richmond, California, where he is working on too many projects to begin to name.

Reviews

A Kirkus September 2016 Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction Book You Won't Want to Miss A Washington Post Best Science Fiction and Fantasy to Read this Month (September) A Verge Most Exciting Science fiction and Fantasy Books Coming out in September "A rare story of summer that feels like the summer--like dreamy intense passions rising and arcing and then spinning away; like beauty underlaid with a tinge of sadness because it is ephemeral. Beagle has captured that seasonal warmth here, beautifully, magically." --New York Times "[STARRED REVIEW] Retired history professor Abe Aronson and his longtime lover, Joanna Delvecchio, encounter an enigmatic young beauty, Lioness Lazos, waitressing in a local diner. Abe offers her his old garage as a temporary home. From the moment she becomes part of their lives, changes--some miraculous, some devastating--begin affecting Abe and Joanna. Lioness's presence inspires Abe to fulfill his cherished dream of playing second harmonica with a small jazz band and Joanna to learn the dicey sport of kayaking, even though she can't swim. As their heady summer phases into early autumn, Lioness's mysterious husband appears on the ferry from Seattle, bringing with him the chilly and inevitable resolution to Beagle's strange and lovely lyric vision." --Publishers Weekly "Best-selling fantasy-author Beagle crafts a tantalizing picture of an atypical Pacific Northwestern couple whose lives are interrupted by myth and mystery. When Joanna and Abe meet a young waitress named Lioness, they are immediately drawn to her primavera aura and offer her a home in Abe's garage. Life on Gardner Island blooms in an endless summer during Lioness' stay. The couple's lives and their relationship continue as usual until Lioness' attempt to run from her past begins to unravel when her mother and husband arrive in town ... Themes of love, loss, nurturing, and adapting are wrapped up in this deliberate and bittersweet tale of what it is to love in your own time, in your own way." --Booklist "In his first new novel in more than a decade, Beagle creates an intimate drama ... A beautifully detailed fantasy." --Kirkus "A quietly glowing and elegantly written revelation of the magic beneath everyday life." --Chicago Tribune "Beagle uses an ancient myth as a backdrop, creating a brilliant stage to explore the personal dynamic of Abe and Joanna's vibrant yet deteriorating relationship." --Washington Post "An excellent story of love, relationships, and responsibility with much to think about after the last page is read." --SF Revu "Peter S. Beagle's latest novel is a bewitching, impossible-to-categorise masterpiece." --Starburst "Summerlong is a delicate and interesting work of speculative fiction that should please old Beagle fans and win him a few new ones." --LitReactor "By turns achingly beautiful and sober--ingly down-to-earth, it is a fantasy for those who have grown up with fantasy..." --Locus "Summerlong is an exercise in masterful, hopeful heartbreak." --Green Man Review "Beagle harnesses that long summer, that summer long, to tell a story steeped in myth and mystery, but with such fine portraits of its principles that its otherworldliness remains grounded and tactile. It's a book that makes me shiver in anticipation of a winter that hasn't quite come." --Barnes & Noble.com Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Blog "The world and people of Summerlong will linger in my memory for more than a season, leaving traces of beauty, wisdom, and heartache behind." --The Emerald City "Beagle is a master of fairytale, deftly creating a gossamer magic on the page. Summerlong is a tale that merges classic myth with modern storytelling. Absolutely beautiful." --Pop Culture Beast "Peter Beagle's novel Summerlong is a lovely, tantalizing read that moves through a finely-detailed, familiar world into a tale as old and as urgent as language." --Patricia A. McKillip, author of Dreams of Distant Shores and Kingfisher "Peter S. Beagle's Summerlong is a rare treat. It revels in texture and music and the ordinary pleasures of life, while the mythic sneaks up on you in tiny ripples and currents, building and growing until suddenly, you realized you're submerged in it. An urban myth for adults, a book of joy and love and worn edges. And a book of magic, wondrous, tragic and unending." --Kurt Busiek, author of Astro City and The Avengers "Like a warm summer afternoon, Peter S. Beagle's upcoming novel, Summerlong, is charmingly quiet yet deeply thoughtful, with an ambiance that will keep readers spellbound to the final page." --Fantasy Faction "One of the best literary speculative fiction novels of the year ... a masterpiece of subtle storytelling that enchants you with its beauty and wistfulness." --Risingshadow "Romantic, bittersweet and heart-wrenching." --Hindustan Times "Beagle's prose is as always, beautiful." --Critical Writ "You'll struggle to find a more absorbing, beautiful novel this year. 5 out of 5 stars" --Bastian's Book Reviews "Soft, suffused with awe, and wryly, unflinchingly honest about the human heart, Summerlong is beautiful in its love for our messy complexity; for the first step into cold water, for the death that lets us grow again, and the ways we learn to love each other--and ourselves--wiser and better." --Leah Bobet, author of An Inheritance of Ashes and Above "Summerlong is charmingly quiet yet deeply thoughtful, with an ambiance that will keep readers spellbound to the final page." --The Quidnunc "Peter S Beagle weaves myth and magic into a modern setting in a way which is truly magnificent." --Life Has a Funny Way "Absolutely worth the wait" --Pixelated Geek "Very, very beautiful" --Booklikes "Beagle's prose is undeniably brilliant." --Nerds of Feather Praise for Peter S. Beagle "One of my favorite writers." --Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time "Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts' reasons that reason does not know." --Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness "The only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien." --Booklist "Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers' hearts." --Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser's Song "It's a fully rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle's imagination." --Kirkus "[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet." --The Saturday Review "Not only does Peter Beagle make his fantasy worlds come vividly, beautifully alive; he does it for the people who enter them." --Poul Anderson, author of The High Crusade "Peter S. Beagle is the magician we all apprenticed ourselves to. Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured." --Lisa Goldstein, author of The Red Magician "Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century's great writers in any arena he chose." --Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar Praise for The Last Unicorn "The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. You need to read it. If you've already read it, you need to read it again." --Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear "Almost as if it were the last fairy tale, come out of lonely hiding in the forests of childhood, The Last Unicorn is as full of enchantment as any of the favorite tales readers may choose to recall... a delicate, sensitive, yet powerful rendering of all the intangibles that make a fairy tale unforgettable." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "The Last Unicorn is one of the true classics of fantasy, ranking with Tolkien's The Hobbit, Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Beagle writes a shimmering prose-poetry, the voice of fairy tales and childhood. -Amazon.com