Hemlock & Silver
A spellbinding Snow White retelling - the instant Sunday Times bestseller
-
-
5.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- €11.99
Publisher Description
An instant Sunday Times bestseller.
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher, Hemlock & Silver is a dark reimagining of Snow White steeped in poison, intrigue and treason of the most magical kind.
‘A new favourite! Masterful storytelling with creepy magic, and a fantastic cat!’ – Sarah Beth Durst, author of The Spellshop
Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.
Not to die, but to save – seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
Or it might be the thing that kills them all . . .
‘A wonderfully offbeat fantasy . . . as delightful as it is impressive’ – Heather Fawcett, author of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Hemlock & Silver was a No. 6 Sunday Times bestseller w/e 23rd August 2025
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Combining dark fairy tale aesthetics with a medical mystery plot, this utterly delightful Snow White riff from Hugo and Nebula Award winner Kingfisher (A Sorceress Comes to Call) transports readers to a New Mexicoesque kingdom of deserts, mesa houses, and saints with the heads of venomous snakes. Kingfisher's gift for charmingly kooky protagonists is on full display in healer Anja, an eccentric scholar of antidotes and obsessive problem solver who can't resist the puzzle posed to her by the king, who seeks a cure for the mysterious illness plaguing his daughter, Princess Snow. The king suspects poison, but Anja can't find any trace of it—until she catches Snow eating a strange, metallic-looking apple. Anja and her bodyguard, Javier, investigate, finding their way into a bizarre mirror world that may hold the key to Snow's illness—or may lead to their deaths. The diagnostic mystery at the heart of this meticulously crafted secondary world fantasy makes for a refreshingly novel plot structure, and Kingfisher wows with her ability to effectively worldbuild using just a few choice details that then come together to create an almost dizzyingly satisfying climax. Meanwhile, the monstrous mirror-gelds are a Lovecraftian revelation and Anja's feline sidekick, Grayling, will steal hearts. This is Kingfisher at her best.
