In Lancashire in 1612 a scandal has rocked the country when over a dozen women are accused of witchcraft.
Meanwhile Fleetwood Shuttleworth is pregnant and struggling to carry the baby to term and in fear of both her and her baby's life she crosses paths with a mysterious girl called Alice Grey who claims she has knowledge to enable both to survive the hard birth.
But Alice is accused alongside the other women and imprisoned.
A desperate Fleetwood is bereft for the woman who has become more than her personal midwife but also her best friend.
So starts a quest to try to prove Alice's innocence against her own husband and the local magistrate Roger who is determined to see justice done.
An absolutely brilliant rendering of the Pendle witches story.
Sinister, brilliantly evocative of the hysteria against wise women and witchcraft of the period and a quite faithful representation of William Harrison Ainsworth's "The Lancashire witches" with the author's flair for poetic writing the "Familiars" has its own air of supernatural mystery and spin to make this a refreshing and original story and a brilliant historical novel.
Meanwhile Fleetwood Shuttleworth is pregnant and struggling to carry the baby to term and in fear of both her and her baby's life she crosses paths with a mysterious girl called Alice Grey who claims she has knowledge to enable both to survive the hard birth.
But Alice is accused alongside the other women and imprisoned.
A desperate Fleetwood is bereft for the woman who has become more than her personal midwife but also her best friend.
So starts a quest to try to prove Alice's innocence against her own husband and the local magistrate Roger who is determined to see justice done.
An absolutely brilliant rendering of the Pendle witches story.
Sinister, brilliantly evocative of the hysteria against wise women and witchcraft of the period and a quite faithful representation of William Harrison Ainsworth's "The Lancashire witches" with the author's flair for poetic writing the "Familiars" has its own air of supernatural mystery and spin to make this a refreshing and original story and a brilliant historical novel.