Adult Fiction
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The Aidan Mysteries. (Lion Fiction and Greenbrier)
The relationship between Aidan and Lucy is strained as she takes him and Melagell on a tour of Cornish holy wells. She clearly has a secret agenda. Who is following them? And who is the "dead man walking" Melangell sees? As danger overtakes them, Lucy is fleeing for her life. Aidan makes a painful journey, bringing young Melangell to Lindisfarne, where he last came with her mother. Lucy, leading a course on Northumbrian saints, has her own frightening memories of the past. They are thrown together as they search for the killer among Lucy's group. **Christian Resources Together "Fiction Book of the Year"** The peace of a remote Welsh pilgrimage site is shattered by a violent murder. Can Aidan and Jenny find the killer as they face the imminence of Jenny's death? "Don't miss this fantastic mystery novel." eden.co.uk. *Read reviews from the blog tour of The Hunted Hare (Monarch). First of the Aidan mysteries. The Suzie Fewing Series. (Severn House) In the Blood (Severn House). A family history investigation brings the violence of the past dangerously close to Suzie's teenage son today. . Buy paperback from Amazon. Buy hardback from Amazon . Buy large print from Amazon A Malignant House (Severn House). Suzie gets the run of the document chest in a stately home, but discovers that violent conflicts are not confined to the 17th century Civil War. British Crime Club Pick, Poisoned Pen Booknews.. Buy paperback from Amazon Buy hardback from Amazon. Those in Peril (Severn House). The Fewings investigate Nick's heroic lifeboatman ancestor. But they also turn up darker stories. There are disturbing links with crime today in coastal waters. Curiosity leads to Millie and her cousin going missing. "Brisk pace, tense climax, and distinctive characters." Publishers Weekly Buy hardback from Amazon. Buy paperback from Amazon Father Unknown. While Suzie and her American friend investigate an illegitimate baby from the past, a pregnant teenager goes missing. Can they find her before worse happens to her? Buy hardback from Amazon Buy ebook from Amazon A trip to Lancashire, to research Nick's ancestors in the cotton mills, puts the Fewings in unexpected danger. Buy ebook from Amazon. Buy hardback from Amazon. A murder takes place at a farm the Fewings visited the day before. Do they hold the clue to the killer? The hunt becomes more sinister as Suzie, Nick and their son Tom pursue the secret inheritance in the woods and Suzie puts herself in danger. Buy hardback from Amazon. Buy ebook from Amazon.
Morgan le Fay series. Revised editions from Cosmos Books of the novels originally published as Daughter of Tintagel. Read this interview: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/intrvws/sampson.htm . Read about the creation of this series: DARK MATTER. |
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| Wise Woman's Telling |
| Nun's Telling |
| Blacksmith's Telling |
| Taliesin's Telling |
| Herself |
Fairy healer or wicked witch? The story of Morgan le Fay and King Arthur as you've never heard it before.
| Gripping… unputdownable | |
| Evening Herald | |
| Poetic and magical | |
| Million |
The Land of Angels
(Robert
Hale)Augustine of Canterbury
comes to pagan Kent and meets the feisty Queen Bertha. It is a dangerous
partnership for both of them.
The novel is elegantly written in literary prose, with lyrical descriptions of landscape and religious rites, set in a fascinating and neglected period of British history. Carla Nayland Historical Fiction.
She writes with great vividness about her subject, which ensures a constantly engaging story. Historical Novels Review.
The Island
Pilgrimage
(Robert Hale - 0-7090-7660-6)
On the holy island of Hy, where the barrier between the spiritual and physical is thin, Margaret and Brian cross one threshold too many.
The Silent Fort
(Robert Hale - 0 7090 7455 7)
The Roman army is advancing on Devon. Should the Celts collaborate or
resist? Melwas demands the weapons of a warrior, though he is still too
young. Cairenn is on the brink of marriage when the chief's son, Aidan
the Red Fox, disappears. Brother and sister plunge into danger, as male
and female druids compete for the soul of the tribe.
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He was the first Roman they had ever seen, and he was dead... |
'Reflections'. Mermaid story in the fantasy anthology Strange Pleasures
(ed. John Grant & Dave Hutchinson. Prime - ISBN: 1-894815-08-4)
The Flight of the Sparrow
( Robert Hale - ISBN: 0-7090-6402-0)
The story of the Edwin, who rose from a hunted exile to become the great
king of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, and his bitter feud with his Celtic foster-brother
Cadwallon of Gwynedd. Edwin is torn between his loyalty to the old Saxon
gods, the Roman Church of his young queen, and the Celtic Christianity
he knew in Wales. As the storm-clouds gather, his niece Hild, who became
Abbess of Whitby, is growing up at his court.
| Fay Sampson's writing is beautiful, powerful, entrenching the reader in Dark Age Britain. |
| Historical Novels Review |
A Casket of Earth
(Robert Hale - ISBN: 0-7090-6054-8)
A Northumbrian Christian princess is married off to the son of the fearsome
pagan king of Mercia. She finds herself caught in a web of intrigue and
murder, as her father's army prepares to attack her father-in-law. Into
the dangerous situation at Lichfield comes the Celtic saint Chad.
| Once again Fay Sampson has interwoven plot and subplot into an intriguing tale of political passion, malice, love and revenge. |
| Historical Novels Review |
Star Dancer
(Headline - ISBN: 0-7472-0661-9 hardback, 0-7472-4150-3 paperback)
The oldest written stories in the world are found on fragments of clay
tablets in Sumerian cuneiform. All these stories of Mesopotamian gods
and goddesses have been gathered together here around the powerful central
figure of Inanna, Lady of Love and War. At the climax of the story she
descends to the Netherworld, to challenge the power of its fearful Queen
Ereshkigal.
| Outstanding fantasy. | |
| Oxford Mail |
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Wise Woman's Telling
(Headline - ISBN: 0-7472-3263-6 paperback, 0-7472-0220-6 hardback)
Morgan le Fay's childhood and the birth of Arthur, told by her nurse,
a wise woman in the old religion.
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from Amazon.co.uk
White Nun's Telling
(Headline - ISBN: 0-7472-3297-0 paperback, 0-7472-0221-4 hardback)
Morgan grows up as a prisoner in a Celtic nunnery, where the old religion
is practised secretly. Told by the nun charged with keeping her safe.
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from Amazon.co.uk
Blacksmith's Telling
(Headline - ISBN: 0-7472-3400-0 paperback. 0-7472-0258-3 hardback)
Morgan is queen to King Urien of Rheged as Arthur emerges into fame. Told
by a smith wise in the old religion, who makes the mistake of challenging
Morgan's power.
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from Amazon.co.uk
Taliesin's Telling
(Headline - ISBN: 0-7472-3568-6 paperback. 0-7472-0340-7 hardback)
Morgan struggles to win Arthur's love, but tragedy looms in the shape
of her foster-child, Arthur's son Modred. Told by the susceptible young
bard Taliesin.
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from Amazon.co.uk
Herself
(Headline - ISBN:0-7472-3708-5 paperback. 0-7474-0452-7 hardback)
Arthur lies mortally wounded and only Morgan can save him. Will she? She
recalls their story, and ironically tells us how writers down the centuries
have demonised her role.
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from Amazon.co.uk
Reflection on the Tintagel novels.
I recognise two well-springs for my Arthurian fiction: poetry and place. In adolescence, I was enchanted by the Idylls of the King and the ruins of Tintagel Castle.
Interestingly, neither of these sources led me to the subject of this study: Morgan le Fay. Tennyson makes no mention of her. The heritage industry of Cornwall celebrates Arthur and Merlin, not Morgan.
For me, early ignorance is creative. A powerful motive for my writing is curiosity: the incomplete fragment, the action which demands explanation, the "what if?" To discover, in adulthood, fresh light on something I thought I knew makes me want to detain the wedding-guests on the doorstep and demand that they listen to my story.
A picture book shared with my small daughter opened my eyes to Morgan. It told of Morgan's theft of Arthur's scabbard, his pursuit of her through the forest, Morgan turning herself and her company into stones and casting away the scabbard of healing. I sensed I had discovered someone significant.
I hadn't read Malory then. It was from Roger Lancelyn Green's children's version, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, that I learned more. It opens with the slaying of Morgan's father and the magical seduction of her mother, both required for the conception of Arthur by Uther Pendragon. I was then a writer of children's novels, a teacher and a mother. I saw immediately how the orphaned young Morgan must feel about that baby half-brother. My concern was for Morgan the child, not yet for the woman she became.
I read the startling sentence: ...she was sent to school in a nunnery; yet, by some means, she learnt much magic, which she used wickedly.
This conjured up images
which formed the inspiration for a novel. That remained unpublished, but
later evolved into the five-volume sequence, Daughter of Tintagel.
Four people tell Morgan's story: two women, two men, two pagan, two Christian,
two sympathetic, two hostile. Lastly, Morgan speaks for herself, and ironically
comments on all the writers who have used her story for their own ends.
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