The familiars / Stacey Halls.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the Author of the Sunday Times Bestseller, Mrs. England!



In 1612 Lancaster, England, the hunt for witches has reached a fever pitch...



But in a time of suspicion and accusation, to be a woman may be the greatest risk of all.



Fleetwood Shuttleworth, the mistress of Pendle Hill's Gawthorpe Hall, is with child. Anxious to produce an heir, she is distraught to find a letter from her physician that warns her husband she will not survive this pregnancy.



Devastated, Fleetwood wanders the estate grounds, where she catches a young woman poaching. Alice Gray claims she is a local midwife and promises to help Fleetwood deliver a healthy baby. But a witch-obsessed frenzy sweeps the countryside. Even woodland creatures or "familiars" are thought to be dark companions of the unholy. And Alice soon stands accused of witchcraft.



Time is running out. The witch trials are about to begin. With both their lives at stake, Fleetwood must prove Alice's innocence. Only they know the truth.



Set against the real Pendle witch trials, this compelling novel draws its characters from historical figures as it explores the lives of seventeenth-century women. Ultimately it raises the question: Was witch hunting really just women hunting?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

DEBUT Halls's first novel is set against the backdrop of the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials and features 17-year-old noblewoman Fleetwood Shuttleworth, who is happily married and mistress of one of the greatest mansions in Lancashire. The only thing she lacks is an heir. After three miscarriages, Fleetwood is pregnant for the fourth time when she discovers a letter from a doctor to her husband, warning that she will not survive another pregnancy. Taking her health into her own hands, Fleetwood engages local midwife Alice Gray to help her deliver a healthy baby. But when Alice is implicated in the witch hunt sweeping the county and arrested, Fleetwood must find a way to save her friend, and by extension her own life, even if it means going against her husband and the town magistrates. VERDICT A relatable first-person narrator helps make the history of this thoroughly researched novel feel more approachable. A solid addition to all fiction collections, with teen appeal. [See Prepub Alert, 8/20/18.]-Lindsay Morton, P.L. of Science, San Francisco © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Halls's enthralling debut opens in 1612, when lonely Fleetwood Shuttleworth, mistress of Gawthorpe Hall in England, is only 17 and pregnant for the fourth time, and, because of a letter her husband received from a physician, she has good reason to believe that she and her baby will not survive. Her failure to give her husband Richard an heir weighs on her, and with him frequently away, she relies on her loyal French mastiff Puck for companionship. Then she meets quiet, strange midwife Alice Gray, who ensures Fleetwood she can help her deliver a healthy, living child. Soon, Alice is arrested for murder and swept up in a vicious witch hunt. Devastated by Alice's imprisonment and reeling from the discovery that Richard is keeping a pregnant mistress in her supposedly abandoned childhood home, Fleetwood sets out to save the life of the only woman who can save hers-and the only true friend she's ever had. Fleetwood, who narrates, paints a portrait of her life and friendship with Alice that is often imbued with a sense of the otherworldly, depicting a pivotal bond they forged in a time when women had little agency over their lives, their bodies, or their fates. Set against the furor leading up to the Pendle witch trials, Halls's winning novel is a quietly powerful and richly evocative tale. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The mistress of an English country estate in the early seventeenth century, Fleetwood Shuttleworth is desperate. So far she has failed to produce an heir, suffering several pregnancies that all ended in miscarriages. Now, pregnant for the fourth time, she finds a letter from her husband that indicates she may not survive another attempt. It is under these circumstances that she meets Alice Gray, whose midwifing skills quickly prove indispensable to Fleetwood. But as an ambitious magistrate sees his opportunity to advance his career by pursuing witches in nearby Pendle, Alice's skills with herbs and healing take on a darker appearance, which may put her life and those of Fleetwood and her unborn child at risk. Rich with intrigue and filled with details of the constraints faced by seventeenth-century women, both well born and common, The Familiars offers a look into the real-life world of the notorious Pendle witch trials that ended with 11 executions. Amid suspicion and rumor, the bond born out of need between Fleetwood and Alice must survive the unforgiving obstacles they both face.--Bridget Thoreson Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

The lives of two young women intersect in a novel that imagines the story behind a famous 17th-century witch trial in northern England.The narrator of journalist Halls' dramatic first novel is 17-year-old Fleetwood Shuttleworth, married at 13 to Richard Shuttleworth, lord of Gawthorpe Hall. She's pregnant for the fourth time, though each of her earlier pregnancies has resulted in a miscarriage. Desperate to produce an heir so she won't be cast aside for a more fertile wife or mistress, and even more frantic to survive the childbirth she suspects may cause her death, she seeks out the help of local midwife Alice Gray. The two have become friends, and Fleetwood's pregnancy is proceeding smoothly, when Alice is accused, along with a dozen of her friends and neighbors, of witchcraft and jailed in a dungeon by a local magistrate. Fleetwood, traveling around the countryside accompanied only by her mastiff, Puckto her husband's chagrinmust try to find a way to free Alice before she is condemned to death. The characters, places, and some of the major events in Halls' well-researched novel are historically accurate, though the author adds some fictional embroidery: There's no evidence that Fleetwood and Alice met, let alone formed an alliance. For better or worse, this is essentially the story of aristocratic Fleetwood rather than commoner Alice, who remains a shadowy figure. Fleetwood is a plucky and determined, if not particularly complex, character. Halls, whose plot sometimes relies too heavily on information concealed for the sake of narrative convenience, adds a few hints of magic to the plot, though she resists using it to get her characters out of trouble. Her main strength lies in her depiction of the difficulties of life for women in this time and place, where pregnancy and childbirth posed a real threat to life and acting in socially inappropriate ways could get one condemned to hanging.A solid if not entirely credible historical novel. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.