Set right after Ethan of Athos. Elli Quinn is still on Kline Station when she finds that there’s at least one more group interested in Terrence Cee.

I’m not really an Elli fan, but this story is fun.

Mark makes a visit to the Residence.

There was an overpowering smell of fresh paint in the antechamber, and although Mark had been kept waiting there for nearly ten minutes, he still thought it was an improvement on his first visit to the Imperial Residence. That time round, he hadn’t requested the audience. And that time round there had been a scalp. He distinctly remembered the scalp.

Short story set in the same universe as the marvelous A Deeper Season (see my rec), but far in the future. This is only one of the snippets available from this universe; see E.E. Beck’s livejournal for more.

AU fanfiction of AU fanfiction. Set fifteen years after A Deeper Season (see my recommendation) and apparently about to be contradicted by the sequel to ADS, What Passing Bells.

Just a quiet evening at home with Miles and Gregor.

Okay. Okay. I’m very excited right now, but I’m going to try to be coherent. I have just finished one of the most enjoyable stories I’ve read in a long time. And it’s something I never thought could be done well: Gregor/Miles slash. It’s takes a bit of suspension of disbelief, since LMB obviously didn’t write the books with this pairing in mind, but A Deeper Season is what the book after Memory might have looked like if she had. The story is only slightly AU, completely canon through Memory except that Laisa never happens.

I found this story accidentally; while googling ‘vashnoi’ I found a recommendation of A Deeper Season at The Bog of Lost Scholars. I heartily agree with everything Castiron says about it there. She(?) says it as well as I ever could, so if you need more convincing to read A Deeper Season, check out what she has to say about it.

I think I have to go re-read my favourite scenes now.

“We’re going to the symphony tonight,” Gregor said.

“We as in you and the Cetagandans?” Miles asked, having somewhat surreal mental images.

ETA: The sequel, What Passing Bells, is now finished! It’s really good, definitely up to the standard set by A Deeper Season.

ETA: The third (and final) planned co-written instalment in the series is Seeds, an Ivan/Ekaterin fic roughly equivalent to Winterfair Gifts.

Crossover between Harry Potter and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books. Won’t make much sense if you don’t know a little about both sources.

In which two of the most intriguing characters from the works of J.K. Rowling and Lois McMaster Bujold meet for tea and, eventually, sympathy.

Without Enchantment is the sequel to Marks and Scars. No Great Magic finishes off the trilogy. There’s another related story, Denizen of the Deep, which should be read before No Great Magic.

I didn’t enjoy the stories as much as a lot of other people seem to have, but they were pretty good.

ETA: I guess I should mention that No Great Magic and Denizen of the Deep contain tie-ins to R.J. Anderson’s Darkness and Light trilogy. And also that the series inspired A.J. Hall’s Time Shall Not Mend, which is set in the same universe.

Set near the end of Shards of Honor. While Cordelia is suffering under psychiatric treatment on Beta, Aral is being watched over by Simon Illyan.

BARRAYAR

Marriage brings stresses;
So often, by tradition,
Wives shop to relax.

It’s really only funny if you’ve read the books.

Borders of Infinity [story] is a short story that was originally published (along with two other short stories: The Labyrinth and The Mountains of Mourning) in Borders of Infinity [novel], which is part of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m not sure how much sense this will make out of sequence, but it will still be excellent. Since Borders of Infinity [novel] is now out of print, at least in North America, it’s nice that it’s becoming available online.

“Thanks,” croaked Miles. A week ago, or in a previous lifetime, depending on how you counted time, Miles had dawdled over a selection of wines, dissatisfied with this or that nuance of flavor. His lips cracked as he grinned in memory. He drank. It was perfectly ordinary water, lukewarm, faintly redolent of chlorine and sulfur. A refined body, but the bouquet is a bit presumptuous….

The Mountains of Mourning is a short story that was originally published (along with two other short stories) in Borders of Infinity, which is part of the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s a really fantastic series; I recommend every book in the series highly. This story makes most sense if you read it as part of the series, but I think it stands very well on its own, too.

Miles grinned wolfishly. “Oh, Karal, I’m a one-man band, I am. I’m a parade.”

“As you say, just so. Ordinary people need extraordinary examples. So they can say to themselves, well, if he can do that, I can surely do this. No excuses.”

“No quarter, yes, I know that game. Been playing it all my life.”

“I think,” said Karal, “Barrayar needs you. To go on being just what you are.”

“Barrayar will eat me, if it can.”

“Yes,” said Karal, his eyes on the horizon, “so it will.” His gaze fell to the graves at his feet. “But it swallows us all in the end, doesn’t it?”