Blackthorn Winter

Blackthorn Winter
Author: Douglas Wilson
Publisher: Veritas Press
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2009-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781932168853

"Treasure, financial hardship, and pirate mistique [sic] all add to a cleverly woven tale of uncommon honor in the face of insideous treachery that stretches from the days of cutlasses and muskets to our own."--Page 4 of cover.

Blackthorn Winter

Blackthorn Winter
Author: Sarah Challis
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2013-12-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466861371

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a spell of frost or snow so severe that it seems as if spring and summer will never return. This is what country people call a blackthorn winter. For Claudia Barron, the blackthorn winter of that particular April is like a metaphor for her whole life: for the end of glamour, financial security and marriage. Her rich and powerful husband has been sent to prison, leaving her homeless and virtually penniless. Hopeless to cling to the remnants of her old life, pointless to stand by a man who has betrayed her in almost every way a man can betray a woman. Instead she goes into hiding, buys the only house she can afford in the Dorset village of Court Barton - a hideous bungalow built in an old kitchen garden - and changes her name. Under a cloak of anonymity she sets out to get herself a job in the local school. But villages don't much like anonymity and before very long Claudia finds herself drawn into the gossip and the grumbling, the lives and loves and quarrels of Court Barton in a way that she had never expected. In the end, Sarah Challis deftly shows that Blackthorn winters always give way to hopeful springs.

Blackthorn Winter

Blackthorn Winter
Author: Kathryn Reiss
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2015-11-05
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0547537573

With her parents on a trial separation, the last thing fifteen-year-old Juliana wants is to be dragged by her mother to an artists' colony in England. Halfway across the world, Juliana misses her father terribly. But soon she has bigger worries when the sleepy town of Blackthorn is set on its heels by the murder of one of its own. Juliana feels compelled to solve the crime, but she is shocked and frightened when she uncovers clues that have chilling parallels to her own mysterious past. Can she figure out who the murderer is before anyone else--herself included--gets hurt?

Comet Weather

Comet Weather
Author: Liz Williams
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2023-10-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504088212

This tale of four fey sisters is “a golden slice of British rural fantasy in the tradition of Diana Wynne Jones and Tanith Lee. . . . I loved it” (Paul Cornell, New York Times–bestselling author of Witches of Lychford). Levelheaded Bee still lives at Mooncote, the family home in Somerset, where she has an unconventional boyfriend of whom her sisters are unaware. Stella, a DJ who’s just done some gigs in Ibiza, has vowed never to return to Mooncote after a row with Bee. Single mother and fashion designer Serena lives in Notting Hill with growing doubts about her relationship with her longtime boyfriend, a rock musician. And Luna, the youngest, is a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows a trail of horse fairs across the country. The four Fallow sisters are scattered like the four winds. But now, with the comet due, they’re drawn back together, united in their desire to find their mother, free-spirited Alys, who disappeared a year ago. They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and is hardly the most dependable of guides . . . “In Comet Weather, Liz Williams has crafted something marvellous. This is a book full of wonder, horror, love, heartbreak, strangeness, and a gorgeously evoked sense of time and place. Between one page and the next you’ll be laughing out loud, then shivering to your bones.” —Alastair Reynolds, award-winning author of Eversion and Revelation Space “This quick-witted and intriguing contemporary fantasy is fresh and original, while also harking back to the mythology of the English landscape and the classic literature that has inspired. A many-faceted delight.” —Juliet E. McKenna, author of the Green Man series “A perfect pleasure to read. Think [Neil] Gaiman: imagination enriched with history, culture, geography, astronomy and archaeology, and a dash of romance.” —Aurealis “One of the most affecting and accomplished fantasy novels of the year so far.” —Locus “Mesmerizing.” —SciFi Mind

Two Williams

Two Williams
Author: Douglas Wilson
Publisher: Veritas Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2007
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781932168662

Young Stephen Monroe must decide on which side of the American Revolution he will take part.

The Traitor's Blade

The Traitor's Blade
Author: Kevin Sands
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1534484574

In 1666, after four months away, friends Christopher Rowe, Tom, and Sally return to London triumphantly but, guided by coded riddles, face a conspiracy that threatens Christopher, as well as the King himself.

Blackthorn Winter

Blackthorn Winter
Author: Liz Williams
Publisher:
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2021
Genre: Changelings
ISBN: 9781912950782

As they make preparations for Christmas, four fey sisters are drawn ever further from the familiar world of contemporary London and their Somerset home, from motorways, fashion design and music, into darker realms where no one is who they seem and nothing is to be trusted. When Serena’s latest collection is mysteriously shredded on the eve of fashion week, the arrival of a wealthy benefactor seems a godsend, but is he all he seems? And what of the green-skinned girl Bee takes in after finding her cowering in a churchyard? How are these connected to the magpie changeling (who claims to be an angel) sent to watch over Stella or the timeslips Luna is experiencing with ever greater frequency now that she’s pregnant? Something is coming for the Fallow sisters, for their friends and their lovers, but they have no idea what, and their mother Alys is no help as she’s gone wandering again, though she did promise to return by Christmas, and December is already here...

Tower of Thorns

Tower of Thorns
Author: Juliet Marillier
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698139232

Award-winning author Juliet Marillier’s “lavishly detailed”(Publishers Weekly) Blackthorn & Grim series continues as a mysterious creature holds ancient Ireland in thrall... Disillusioned healer Blackthorn and her companion, Grim, have settled in Dalriada to wait out the seven years of Blackthorn’s bond to her fey mentor, hoping to avoid any dire challenges. But trouble has a way of seeking them out. A noblewoman asks for the prince of Dalriada’s help in expelling a creature who threatens the safety and sanity of all who live nearby from an old tower on her land—one surrounded by an impenetrable hedge of thorns. With no ready solutions to offer, the prince consults Blackthorn and Grim. As Blackthorn and Grim put the pieces of this puzzle together, it’s apparent that a powerful adversary is working behind the scenes. Their quest soon becomes a life-and-death struggle—a conflict in which even the closest of friends can find themselves on opposite sides.