A beautiful epic of love, longing, redemption, and enchantment in the tradition of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon Iceland, AD 1000 Freya knows that her people are doomed. Warned by the Fates of an impending disaster, she must embark on a journey to find a magnificent gold necklace, one said to possess the power to alter the course of history. But even as Freya travels deep into the mountains of Iceland, the country is on the brink of war. The new world order of Christianity is threatening the old ways of Iceland's people, and tangled amidst it all are two star-crossed lovers who destiny draws them together-even as their families are determined to tear them apart Infused with the rich history and mythology of Iceland, Betsy Tobin's sweeping novel is an epic adventure of forbidden love, lust, jealousy, faith and magical wonder set under the shadow of a smoldering volcano.

Ice Land: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Tobin, Betsy

Contemporary

Plume

Bone House evokes seventeenth-century rural England. It is the tale of two women. One is Dora - large, voluptuous, and charismatic - a prostitute to whom men are drawn for pleasure, women for friendship. Her strange death in an icy ravine affects everyone in the tiny village: her enormous, slow-minded son; an embittered midwife; the hunchbacked lord of the manor; his decaying mother; and an itinerant portrait painter, whose arrival in the village unearths secrets and passions beyond anyone's expectations. The other - young, slight, and solitary - is a dutiful chambermaid to the mistress of the manor until Dora's accident begins to distract her from her daily tasks. Her quest to uncover the truth about the prostitute's mysterious life and sudden death leads her to a terrible discovery, and the beginnings of a future.

Bone House

British & Irish

Scribner

In this stunning debut, Betsy Tobin spins a classic tale of gothic suspense. Immersing readers in Elizabethan England, she masterfully evokes a heady place where science and superstition walk hand-in-hand and sensuality and violence are masked by the merest veneer of gentility. ...some people are the center of their world, and others are the spokes. The center of one village was Dora, the great-bellied prostitute whose lush curves gave solace to men even as her compassion and honesty drew the company of women. So when Dora is found dead in an icy ravine, her loss impacts everyone. So, too, does it torment a young chambermaid at the Great House. Determined to discover the truth, she ?nds that Dora left behind many unanswered questions, along with a huge, slow-witted son, a boy of eleven trapped in a man's body. The deeper she digs, the more the mystery of Dora's life is revealed, until a terrible secret is laid bare.

When Dora, the village prostitute, is found dead at the bottom of a ravine, everyone in her rural community is strangely shaken. The men grieve, of course -- but it's not just they who are affected, for the charismatic Dora touched everyone around her. At the center of those who mourn is the novel's narrator, a young maid serving the mistress of the local manor house, who sets out to unravel the complex web of secrets that lies behind Dora's death. This obsessive quest takes her back and forth between high and low society and eventually leads her to a terrible discovery and the beginnings of a future. Through the captivating and unfaltering voice of this appealing narrator, Betsy Tobin brilliantly illuminates the Elizabethan obsession with the body -- or bone house -- and its primary role in determining one's destiny. In rendering so vividly both the privileges and privation of Elizabethan village life, she has crafted an uncommonly graceful and riveting first novel.

Headline/Review

The Bounce

THE BOUNCE is a masterpiece of lion-taming, cross-dressing, lost mothers and lost innocence, set in the glamorous and squalid world of the Victorian circus. Nineteen-year-old Nathan sails the Atlantic in search of the mother who abandoned him. He takes a job as a lion-tamer in a circus south of the Thames, where he meets Lulu, a celebrated rope-dancer with secrets; Nan, the orange-girl, haunted by her dead son and his menacing father; Queen, the lion on whom everything rests; and, at last, his mother - or is she his mother, after all? Like BONE HOUSE, THE BOUNCE is pacy, darkly Gothic and powerfully evocative, but its setting and the characters elevate it to a new level: literary historical fiction at its spine-tingling, compelling best

Crimson China

Oakhill Publishing (CD)

Romance

Romantic Suspense

Charnwood Pub

Ice Land

Literary

Short Books Ltd

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