Adult Fiction
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*Out now The Land of Angels (Robert Hale)* New novel about Queen Bertha of Kent and Augustine of Canterbury.
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. |
* Out now! *
Morgan le Fay series. New, revised editions from Cosmos Books of the novels originally published as Daughter of Tintagel.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk or from Wildside Press
| Wise Woman's Telling | Wildside Press |
| Nun's Telling | Wildside |
| Blacksmith's Telling | Wildside |
| Taliesin's Telling | Wildside |
| Herself | Wildside |
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 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... |
***New!***
'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.
Buy
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.
Buy
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.
Buy
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.
Buy
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.
Buy
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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