The Plague Charmer, by Karen Maitland, author of the much-loved Company of Liars - her first novel of the plague - will chill and delight fans of Kate Mosse and C. J. Sansom in equal measure.
Riddle me this: I have a price, but it cannot be paid in gold or silver.
Porlock Weir, Exmoor, 1361. Thirteen years after the Great Pestilence, plague strikes England for the second time. Sara, a packhorse man's wife, remembers the horror all too well and fears for the safety of her children. Only a dark-haired stranger offers help but at a price that no one will pay.
Fear gives way to hysteria in the village, and when the sickness spreads to her family, Sara finds herself locked away by neighbours she has trusted for years. And as her husband - and then others - begin to die, the cost no longer seems so unthinkable.
The price that I ask from one willing to pay...a human life.
