Published in 2023
384 pages
Naomi Kelsey is the winner of two Northern Writers’ Awards and of the HWA Dorothy Dunnett Competition 2021. Her fiction has been published in Mslexia magazine and shortlisted for several further awards including the Bridport Prize and the Bristol Prize. She also writes book reviews for ‘On the Tudor Trail’. By day she is an English teacher in Newcastle, where she lives with her husband, their two children and their dog. The Burnings is her first novel.
What is this book about?
Nothing scares men like witchcraft . . .
1589. Scottish housemaid Geillis and Danish courtier Margareta lead opposite lives, but they both know one thing: when a man cries “witch”, no woman is safe.
Yet when the marriage of King James VI and Princess Anna of Denmark brings Geillis and Margareta together, everything they supposed about good, evil, men, and women, is cast in a strange and brilliant new light.
For the first time in history, could black magic – or rumours of it – be a very real tool for women’s political gain?
As the North Berwick witch trials whip Scotland – and her king – into a frenzy of paranoia, the clock is ticking. Can Margareta and Geillis keep each other safe? And once the burnings are over, in whose hands will power truly lie?
Inspired by the incredible true story that set 16th-century Scotland and Denmark alight, The Burnings is 2023’s most bewitching debut novel, by a multi-awardwinning new star of historical fiction.
