The Familiars
The dark, captivating Sunday Times bestseller and original break-out witch-lit novel
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Publisher Description
Don't miss Stacey Halls' incredible new novel THE HOUSEHOLD - available to buy now!
The Sunday Times Bestseller, Richard & Judy Book Club Pick and original break-out witchlit novel.
To save her child, she will trust a stranger. To protect a secret, she must risk her life . . .
Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.
Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby, and to prove the physician wrong.
As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the North-West, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye?
Soon the two women's lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary trial at Lancaster approaches, and Fleetwood's stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake.
Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other...
'Assured and alluring, this beautiful tale of women and witchcraft and the fight against power was a delight from start to finish' JESSIE BURTON
'Stacey Halls is a writer of great originality, great imagination and great sense of place. Atmospheric, intelligent, accessible, every novel is worth reading, then reading again and again' KATE MOSSE
'The new Hilary Mantel' COSMOPOLITAN
'Captivating' SUNDAY EXPRESS
'Arresting' THE TIMES
'A brilliant debut, pacy and inventive, from a terrifically talented new voice' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Truly spellbinding' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
'A must-read novel' HEATHER MORRIS bestselling author of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ
'Enthralling, spellbinding, full of twists and turns, written with heart and style - and the final chapters will have you racing to the end' KATE WILLIAMS
'Phenomenal. Beautiful, haunting, strange and evocative' LIZ HYDER
'Historical fiction at its feminist best' RED Magazine
**THE HOUSEHOLD, the brand new novel from Stacey Halls, is available to pre-order now**
*Sunday Times bestseller February and September 2018*
*Winner of Women's Prize for Fiction x Good Housekeeping Futures award - Good Housekeeping 14 Oct 2022*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Halls's enthralling debut opens in 1612, when lonely Fleetwood Shuttleworth, mistress of Gawthorpe Hall in England, is only 17 and pregnant for the fourth time, and, because of a letter her husband received from a physician, she has good reason to believe that she and her baby will not survive. Her failure to give her husband Richard an heir weighs on her, and with him frequently away, she relies on her loyal French mastiff Puck for companionship. Then she meets quiet, strange midwife Alice Gray, who ensures Fleetwood she can help her deliver a healthy, living child. Soon, Alice is arrested for murder and swept up in a vicious witch hunt. Devastated by Alice's imprisonment and reeling from the discovery that Richard is keeping a pregnant mistress in her supposedly abandoned childhood home, Fleetwood sets out to save the life of the only woman who can save hers and the only true friend she's ever had. Fleetwood, who narrates, paints a portrait of her life and friendship with Alice that is often imbued with a sense of the otherworldly, depicting a pivotal bond they forged in a time when women had little agency over their lives, their bodies, or their fates. Set against the furor leading up to the Pendle witch trials, Halls's winning novel is a quietly powerful and richly evocative tale.
