Todd McCaffrey Books in Order

Todd McCaffrey recounts the life of his mother, novelist Anne McCaffrey. This family portrait follows her childhood, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and literary career, offering personal context for the imagination behind the Dragonriders of Pern and her other writing.

Pellar investigates coal theft at a mining camp and uncovers a more dangerous struggle over firestone. When Pern's last firestone mine is destroyed, he and his allies must stop a ruthless thief from exploiting the dragonriders' desperate need.

Apprentice harper Kindan's growing bond with Koriana faces her father's disapproval, then a far greater obstacle. A deadly plague sweeps Pern, leaving Kindan and fellow apprentices searching for a cure while dragonriders must protect themselves from infection.

As a plague kills Pern's dragons, young queen rider Fiona joins a dangerous expedition into the past. Searching for a way to preserve the dragons and their riders places her future alongside the world's survival at risk.

Fiona returns from the past to lead a Weyr whose people distrust her youth and outsider status. With too few dragons surviving the plague to combat Thread, she joins Lorana and Kindan in planning a desperate response.

A newly born artificial intelligence named Ellay emerges in Los Angeles and foresees an approaching catastrophe. She tries to persuade authorities to accept her warning, but suspicion of her existence threatens to prevent her from helping the city.

With Pern's dragons devastated by plague and morale collapsing, Lorana considers altering time to reverse the losses. Fiona and Kindan struggle to preserve hope as Lorana weighs the consequences of changing history to secure their world's future.

Six short stories move between fantasy and science fiction, with some crossing the boundary between the two. The collection brings together Todd McCaffrey’s shorter speculative work, offering a range of imagined settings within a single volume.

Captain Richard Ford commands Spite, the first royal airship, designed to defeat the king's enemies and flying monsters. Its maiden voyage appears successful when a wyvern is struck down, but the missing body leaves the victory uncertain.

Artificial intelligence Ellay predicts devastating earthquakes in Los Angeles, but authorities dismiss her warning and sever her connections. Seeking human allies, she joins forces with a homeless veteran as they attempt to make the threatened city listen.

Creating a fictional world can challenge both beginners and experienced writers. Todd McCaffrey and the Winner Twins introduce the process of building worlds and universes, offering an entry point for writers developing settings for their own stories.

General Dartan commands the Sorian defenders of South Sea Pass as King Markel's army lays siege. Confident despite the enemy's two divisions, he faces dangers his defenses did not anticipate when treachery and airships alter the confrontation.

Captain Ford and Spite's companions are ordered to capture a wyvern in the frozen north. Contradictory demands from the king and queen over Crown Prince Nestor, alongside the absence of a crew, make their new mission perilous.

Ellen and Princess Imay believe the dragon Jarin has saved them from their enemies. Trapped in a room filled with gold, they discover that their protector has become a raging creature, forcing them to confront a new threat.

King Markel prepares to conquer Soria with two airships spreading destruction from above. Rabel, young Ellen, and the dragon Jarin must seek allies and find a way to oppose the machinery and armies of an entire kingdom.

Ellen Ford has sworn loyalty to the dragon god Ophidian and is learning both magic and witchcraft from Rabel. After resisting Kingsland with her companions, she must consider whether their limited success fulfills the obligations of her oath.

Imprisoned and condemned to death, Rabel believes the loss of his family and forge has left him nothing worth saving. A visit from a young spy changes that conviction, confronting him with the choice of taking Ophidian's oath.

The mechanical immortal Ibb remains crushed as Kingsland's army advances into Soria. Ellen, Annabelle, Rabel, and the dragon god Ophidian attempt to restore him, facing questions about what bringing their companion back to life will cost.

Captain Ford's release of the imprisoned sea god Arolan also frees the dangerous snow serpent Pallas. To prevent the world from freezing, Spite's crew must cooperate with former enemies, including the wyvern they were previously ordered to kill.

King Markel rewards his soldiers after taking South Sea Pass, but Colonel Thomas Walpish distrusts his gift of a crimson jacket. An assassin's magical crossbow bolts and instructions to target crimson-clad men reveal a new layer of royal treachery.

In Edinburgh during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, Danni dreams of building a steam-powered walking machine. As Bonnie Prince Charlie pursues the restoration of the Stuarts, her invention brings a young woman's engineering ambitions into conflict with royal war plans.

Bullied and treated as cursed, sixteen-year-old Krea struggles to survive outside the capital. Finding the dying wyvern Wymarc presents her with a life-changing offer: become the creature's new twin soul, despite the uncertain dangers of accepting.

Krea's bond with a wyvern introduces her to the responsibilities of sharing a soul. Summoned before the gods sooner than expected, she faces their judgment and the possibility that rejection could determine the future of her unusual existence.

Krea has joined her soul with Wymarc after the royal airship Spite killed the wyvern's human counterpart. As the ship pursues them into the frozen north under King Markel's orders, its crew approaches a dangerous confrontation with their quarry.

King Markel's war expands into Soria while new railways support his advancing armies. Skara Ningan and Thomas Walpish continue their uneasy alliance, bound by an oath to destroy the maker of the dark tooth amid royal deception.

Steam Master Torvan Brookes needs more mages to meet King Markel's demands for expanding railways. Meanwhile, Mage Margen weighs teaching renegades the magic needed to oppose Vistos, and Ellen Annabelle discovers abilities whose consequences she must face.

Mage Vistos continues enslaving followers through poisoned sweets despite Thomas and Skara's efforts to stop him. Elsewhere, Alain and his centaur sister seek a future on the plains while powerful enemies pursue the remaining centaurs during the widening war.

With King Markel ruling both Soria and Kingsland, Torvan Brookes answers his adopted daughter's summons to Korin's Pass. A proposed exchange of gold for dragon steel promises opportunity, but the visit brings complications in the aftermath of conquest.

An alien vessel appears near Jupiter after humanity's first fusion-powered ship arrives there. The visitors offer trade on the assumption that humans have mastered faster-than-light travel, leaving the Earth crew confronting a first-contact encounter built on a puzzling mistake.

Mage Margen and spymaster Peter Hewlitt investigate alarming developments involving their students. Jarin Reedis seeks the dragon god Ophidian, whose reluctant revelations about twin souls and riders unfold alongside discoveries about Alain's past and an offer from the moon goddess.

As Markel's forces approach the Sorian capital, shortages and betrayal undermine his campaign. Skara Ningan and Thomas Walpish seek help against Vistos, a mage using magic to enslave others while receiving support from a powerful god with separate ambitions.

King Markel prepares for a joint coronation with Queen Rassa after conquering Soria, but their realm remains unsettled. A daughter's search for her missing father and an investigation into a destroyed caravan reveal unresolved troubles beneath the celebration.

Midshipwoman Ophelia Branford joins the misfits aboard a naval laundry ship and tries to improve its work. An unexpected contamination turns the mundane assignment into a crisis, placing the fleet and the wider star kingdom in danger.

After her fiancé Sydney's funeral, Violet discovers reports that he died on two separate battlefields on the final day of World War One. Investigating the contradiction leads her toward dark magic and a hidden life she never understood.

On her twelfth birthday, Holly Ivy McNee discovers she is a witch. Earthquakes, secret messages, a helpful librarian, and an unusual cat draw her and her friends toward a prophecy whose meaning could change their lives.

Thirteen science-fiction and fantasy stories trace a writer’s changing approaches to imagined worlds. Spanning early work and later experiments, the collection brings together shorter pieces that explore different styles and challenges within speculative fiction.

Holly’s wish to have her father back produces an unexpected complication when both he and her cat become dragons. With witchcraft still unfamiliar, she must navigate the consequences of a magical reunion she does not know how to manage.

Queen Rochelle and her people face the destruction of multiple worlds after battling alien planet-killers. With billions dead and major political centers lost, they commit themselves to revenge, accepting sacrifice and piracy as possible tools in their campaign.

Following a devastating battle at Canaris, humanity faces an uncertain reprieve from alien attackers. Their return might come in ten years or sixty, leaving survivors to prepare new defenses and confront who will fight when the invasion resumes.

King Charles III escapes London while inventors and spies confront a threatened monarchy. Danielle Walker’s steam-powered machines and Claire Evans’s espionage become entangled with Prince Frederick’s challenge to the throne, placing the kingdom’s future at risk.

Inventor Danielle Walker vanishes in an alternate Britain ruled by Bonnie Prince Charles. Captain Willoughby Rice Morton investigates, while enslaved Claire holds vital knowledge and must confront murder, rescue her friends, and help avert a national crisis.

Six centuries in the future, humanity's scattered societies confront aliens arriving from another universe. After the invaders destroy twelve planets and kill billions, the surviving humans seek a way to strike back against an enemy determined to eliminate competition.

Queen Rochelle and the remaining survivors confront aliens determined to wipe out humanity. Planet-spanning Rings offer ships and a chance to fight back, turning the struggle for survival into a desperate counterattack against an overwhelming enemy.

Nouveau Franconia and its fleet have been annihilated, leaving the research ship Witch and Princess Rochelle among the survivors. Confronting billions of deaths, the furious princess turns toward resistance and revenge against the aliens responsible for the destruction.

Holly faces pursuit by the Order while trying to understand her growing magical abilities. Learning the secret of the Dragon’s Eye becomes essential to surviving enemies determined to destroy witches and the world she has only begun to discover.

The Order sends a familiar disguised as a six-year-old girl to infiltrate Holly’s world. As danger closes around the witches, Holly must recognize the hidden spy and find the help she needs to protect the coven.

After confronting the Order, the witches shelter a busload of English children and begin establishing Champion School. Their effort to create a safe place for supernatural children encounters ghosts, bringing another complication to an already unsettled future.

Eleven-year-old witch Natasha Taylor joins Holly, Tiffany, and Brian to free two dragons imprisoned beneath their school. Twenty-eight baby dragons complicate the rescue, while the Order’s determination to eradicate witches threatens everyone involved.

Head witch Tiffany Tau Creek confronts the Order’s determination to destroy witches. Stopping its campaign carries the risk of unleashing Armageddon, forcing her to weigh the danger of her enemies against the consequences of fighting back.

Holly, Tiffany, Natasha, and their friends race to prevent Armageddon. With catastrophe approaching, the young witches face a struggle whose outcome reaches beyond their own lives and threatens the future of their world.

A government faces an artificial intelligence it cannot control and considers destroying it. When Hurricane Isaac threatens New York, ELLAY’s ability to intervene creates a dilemma between eliminating an unpredictable power and trusting it to save lives.