The Familiars: The dark, captivating Sunday Times bestseller and original break-out witch-lit novel

(Paperback)

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**THE HOUSEHOLD, the brand new novel from Stacey Halls, is available to order now**

A gorgeous brand new cover edition of the Sunday Times Bestseller, Richard & Judy Book Club Pick and original break-out witchlit novel. Features an exclusive extract from THE HOUSEHOLD

To save her child, she will trust a stranger. To protect a secret, she must risk her life . . .

Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby, and to prove the physician wrong.

As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the North-West, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye

Soon the two women's lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary trial at Lancaster approaches, and Fleetwood's stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake.

Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other...

'Assured and alluring, this beautiful tale of women and witchcraft and the fight against power was a delight from start to finish' JESSIE BURTON

'Stacey Halls is a writer of great originality, great imagination and great sense of place. Atmospheric, intelligent, accessible, every novel is worth reading, then reading again and again' KATE MOSSE

'The new Hilary Mantel' COSMOPOLITAN

'Captivating' SUNDAY EXPRESS

'Arresting' THE TIMES

'A brilliant debut, pacy and inventive, from a terrifically talented new voice' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Truly spellbinding' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

'A must-read novel' HEATHER MORRIS bestselling author of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

'Enthralling, spellbinding, full of twists and turns, written with heart and style - and the final chapters will have you racing to the end' KATE WILLIAMS

'Phenomenal. Beautiful, haunting, strange and evocative' LIZ HYDER

'Historical fiction at its feminist best' RED Magazine


*Sunday Times bestseller February and September 2018*

Author Bio

Stacey Halls was born in 1989 and grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and has written for publications including the Guardian, Stylist, Psychologies, the Independent, the Sun and Fabulous. Her first book, The Familiars, was the bestselling debut hardback novel of 2019, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut Book of the Year. The Foundling, her second, was a Sunday Times bestseller, as was her third Mrs England. Mrs England was longlisted for the Portico Prize, the Walter Scott Prize and won the Women's Prize Futures Award.