An all-original collection of twenty-seven stories by some of today’s most inventive authors about alien encounters with humans-from the aliens’ perspective

New York Times bestselling authors Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverley, and Lois McMaster Bujold join forces with award-winning authors Catherine Asaro, Jennifer Roberson, and Deb Stover in this all-new anthology of original stories proving that love can conquer all…even the boundaries of time and space. From sixteenth-century Britain to the farthest reaches of outer space, from medieval adventures to tales of inter-galactic love, here is a compilation that explores the wonderfully kinetic forces that lovers share-forces too great to resist…

Swordfighters Tiger and Del return in this all-new swashbuckling adventure — filled with all the dramatic action, danger, magic, and the crackling repartee and verbal fireworks that characterize the national bestselling Sword series. Sword-Born is the latest book in this continuing tale of a powerful friendship that transforms into something stronger, as two strong, opinionated people from very different societies live and fight alongside each other… even as their views of themselves and the world around them change and grow

For the first time in years, life seems settled for Tiger and Del. They run a school for sword-dancers in the South. They’re raising a two-year-old daughter. They collect income from their interest in a thriving cantina. Occasionally Tiger must dance against sword-dancers bent on killing him for forsaking the oaths and vows of the circle, but for the most part it’s an idyllic life. Until Tiger’s twenty-five-year-old son accuses him of being "domesticated." Thus challenged by his own flesh-and-blood to reclaim his legendary status, Tiger, accompanied by Del and his son, embarks on a journey northwards that will test his sword skill and resolve, and lead him and Del into danger from an old enemy. Though Tiger had forsaken his magic years before, he now faces the choice to reclaim it, and to wield it, in order to save those he loves

Having freed himself from the stone forests of Skandi, Tiger and Del return to the South. They originally fled the South because, to save Del’s life, Tiger broke his vows as a seventh level sword-dancer, declaring himself elaii-ali-ma. Every sword-dancer in the South, even ones he once considered his friends, are now bound to kill him. They don’t even have to invite him into the circle, where sword-dances are usually conducted, they can execute him any way they deem the simplest. Tiger returns to this land, originally, because the South is his home and he hopes to rebuild the shodo at Alimat, where he was trained. Soon he is haunted by dreams, dreams of a skeleton, of a woman’s voice that commands him — "Find me," she says, "And take up the sword."