“This is Gregory par excellence” ( Kirkus Reviews). This is the time of witch-mania, and if the villagers discover the truth, they could take matters into their own hands. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life.Įngland is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. Until she can, she is neither maiden nor wife nor widow, living in a perilous limbo. On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death.

This New York Times bestseller from “one of the great storytellers of our time” ( San Francisco Book Review) turns from the glamour of the royal courts to tell the story of an ordinary woman, Alinor, living in a dangerous time for a woman to be different. Kathy Blattman, The Well-Read Moose, Coeur d'Alene, ID Gregory never fails to breathe new life into forgotten histories!” In a small fishing village where anything can be blamed on the evils of women, gossip rules, gossip destroys, and anyone can be suspected of witchcraft. Parliamentarians clash with Royalists, and Papists secret away from their Puritan neighbors in this 17th-century Thorn Birds-esque tale of struggle, caste systems, forbidden love, secrets, superstition, temptation, and infidelity. “In Phillipa Gregory’s new series, she leaves the intrigue and glamor of the royal court for the grit and struggle of an impoverished fishing village off the southern coast of England. Lisa Smegal, Rivendell Bookstore, Abilene, KS Summer 2020 Reading Group Indie Next List I highly recommend this book for fans of historical fiction.” As always, her latest novel, Tidelands, is obviously thoroughly researched, with many historical facts sprinkled throughout. “Philippa Gregory never fails to create beautifully written stories that suck you in and transport you back to the time and place the book is set.

The fairmile series