Alys Clare

Winter, 1211. King John's reign is harsh, and his tax collectors wring money from people near to starvation. Homeless, desperate men are reduced to walking the streets, begging for handouts, and the nuns at Hawkenlye Abbey, now under John's iron rule, are all but powerless to help. Former abbess Helewise decides to move back to her cell near the abbey, to better help the needy, putting a strain on her tentative relationship with Sir Josse D'Acquin....

When her cousin Morcar is attacked while fishing for eels near Ely Abbey, Lassair is sent to the Norman occupied island to nurse him. As the secret hidden within the walls of the abbey claims more victims, Lassair is forced to face a challenge that she fears is far beyond her.

1st in a new series featuring Lassair, a 14-year-old girl with special gifts training to be a healer in a Fenland village, in 11th century England.

In Autumn of 1093, Lassair encounters a veiled noblewoman on the quay at Cambridge, set on by an angry mob. She has no idea that the woman, alone but for her infant child, brings both mystery and peril. Then a devastating flood hits the fens, and among the wreckage washed up Aelf Fen is a body. Lassair, in the company of a sheriff's officer, wonders if she is dealing with murder. Meanwhile, in the south, Lassair's beloved Rollo is moving with relief...

Apprentice healer Lassair isn't too alarmed when a travelling peddler relates a grisly tale of a red-bearded giant breaking into a woman's home and caving in her skull like an eggshell; peddlers, she has observed, tend towards the dramatic. But her attitude changes when she learns that the dead woman is a distant relation. The incident makes Lassair's family uneasy, for the intruder seemed to be searching for something. What could it be? Lassair has...

Late autumn, 1196. A stranger arrives at New Winnowlands but disappears. A body is found in the forest, and three Knights Hospitallers arrive on the trail of a runaway monk. Josse realizes the mysterious guest brought a terrible secret- and danger.

"October, 1093. Two young men have been brutally beaten to death; a third viciously attacked. All three men are of similar appearance. But could there be another connection? Lassair meanwhile has agreed to accompany her former lover Rollo on a perilous journey north in search of King William. On their trail is a skilled, relentless and ruthless assassin. Who is he -- and why has he targeted Rollo? If they are to survive, the hunted must become the...

"October, 1093. At her mentor's urgent request, Lassair is accompanying Gurdyman across the sea to Spain. But why is he so insistent on embarking on this difficult and dangerous journey just as winter approaches? And why does he seem so afraid? Could there be any connection to the vagrant found lying dead outside his home, a single pearl clutched in his outstretched hand? As the pair reach the remote mountainous regions of northern Spain, Lassair...

Surgeon Gabriel Taverner finds it difficult to gain the locals' trust as he attempts to reestablish himself as a country physician in rural Devon, England. A series of disturbing incidents convinces him that at least one person does not welcome his presence. Called out to examine a partially decomposed body found beside the river, Gabriel discovers that he has a personal connection to the dead man. Teaming up with Coroner Theophilus Davey to find...