A brilliant young high school teacher. A seemingly cold alien ruler. A love that Earth Central Command tried to prevent.
A story that will appeal to fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Zenna Henderson, THE MARANN recounts one woman's journey through loneliness, shattering revelations, and attempted assassination on a world where everyone can read her emotions.
Marianne Woolsey teaches high school Spanish in rural Iowa, when Earth Central Command decides her linguistic talents would be better exercised if she spent 26 years teaching the daughter and heir of an alien ruler on a planet 24 light years from Earth. Now she's alone on a planet of aliens so humanlike that she has to keep telling herself her student's noble father is just her boss.
Handsome - and deadly - the Sural has ruled his province and led his planet far longer than he can admit to his daughter's human tutor. He hides much more from the space-faring races of the Trade Alliance than he is willing to reveal. What he doesn't want Central Command to know, he has to conceal from Marianne, but Marianne is concealing her own secrets from him - and as an empath, he knows it.
This first novel in the Tales of Tolari Space series explores what can happen when you put an unsuspecting human on a planet full of empaths.