NINTH CHILD (PB)

A spellbinding novel combining Scottish folklore with hidden history set in 1856 around the Loch Katrine waterworks, a Highland wilderness fast becoming an industrial wasteland. It is no place for a lady and Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor there. The hills echo with the gunpowder blasts of hundreds of navvies tunnelling day and night - digging so deep that there are those who worry they are disturbing the land of faery itself. Here, just inside the Highland line, the membrane between the modern world and the ancient unseen places is very thin. With new life quickening within her, Isabel can only wait. But a darker presence has also emerged from the gunpowder smoke. And he is waiting too.