Night's Daughter
Since time immemorial, when the Serpent-lord coupled in the Great Rite with the Priestess of the Night, the Kingdoms of Light and Dark, of Sun and of Moon have been at war. Now Pamina, daughter of the Starqueen, supreme symbol of the Night, and of Sarastro, King of the Royal House of the Sun, has to choose which of her parents she will follow, in custom and in principle. And together with her lover, the princely Tamino, she must face her Ordeal at the Court of Wisdom, Ordeals of Earth and Air, of Fire and Water, from which none can flinch and none can escape.
Fantasy fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer was born on a farm in Albany, New York, during the Great Depression.  As a child, she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy stories.  She began writing them herself in 1949 and sold her first story to Vortex in 1952.  She also married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949.  Early in her career, she used pseudonyms for stories she wrote outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels such as I Am a Lesbian (1962).  In 1964 she divorced her first husband and married numismatist Walter H. Breen.  In 1965 she received her B.A. degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.  She then moved to Berkeley, California, to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  In 1966, she co-founded the Society for Creative Anachronism.  In 1967 she moved to Staten Island, New York.  She separated from her second husband in 1979 but remained married and continued a business relationship, until 1990 when he was arrested on child molestation charges and they divorced.  After suffering declining health for years, she died in Berkeley in 1999.  In 2000, she was awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.