The Merrybegot - Tapa blanda

Superb (The Times)

This truly superb novel will have your heart racing, your hands sweating and your brain whirring. You must read it. (Guardian)

Powerful and intriguing, The Merrybegot bewitches and beguiles from first to last. (Celia Rees)

Hearn has the skill of a conjuror and her novel casts a spell (Sunday Times)

There's plenty more fire and brimstone to be found in Julie Hearn's The Merrybegot, which layers fact and fiction, the earthbound and the supernatural to atmospheric effect. (Observer)

The Merrybegot combines magic realism and historical fact in a formula that Julie Hearn has made her own (Sunday Telegraph)

In a remote west-country village, all is not as it seems. The minister's daughters have taken to their bed, howling and spitting pins. Rumours of bad magic and witchcraft are spreading fast, the piskies are whispering in the orchard and an ill wind is blowing. Nell, the cunning woman's granddaughter, finds the fingers of blame are all pointing towards her.

With Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-Finder General, on his way, Nell is alone, trapped and in mortal danger. Who can she trust? Who will save her?

In years to come, Patience Madden, the minister's youngest daughter, has a confession to make. A confession that shows another side to what happened to her sister, Grace, and to Nell, half a century before . . .