Philip Rickman Knihy

The compelling first instalment of The John Dee Papers. Religious strife, Glastonbury legends, the bones of King Arthur and the curse of the Tudors... can astrologer John Dee help the young Queen Elizabeth to avoid it?

Though dead for two millennia, he remains perfectly preserved in black peat. The Man in the Moss is one of the most fascinating finds of the century. But, for the isolated Pennine community of Bridelow, his removal is a sinister sign. A danger to the ancient spiritual tradition maintained, curiously, by the Mothers' Union. In the weeks approaching Samhain - the Celtic feast of the dead - tragedy strikes again in Bridelow. Scottish folk singer Moira Cairns and American film producer Mungo Macbeth discover their Celtic roots are deeper and darker than they imagined. And, as fundamentalist zealots of both Christian and satanic persuasions challenge an older, gentler faith, the village faces a natural disaster unknown since the reign of Henry VIII.

The Revd Merrily Watkins had never wanted a picture-postcard parish - or a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she particularly wanted to walk straight into a local dispute over a controversial play about a strange seventeeth-century clergyman accused of witchcraft ... a story that certain old-established families would rather remained obscure. But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets. A paradise of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. And also - as Merrily and her teenage daughter Jane discover - a village where horrific murder is a tradition that spans centuries.