The Ninth Child

  • Author Sally Magnusson
  • Narrator various
  • Publisher John Murray Press
  • Run Time 8 hours and 28 minutes
  • Format Audio
  • Genre Historical fiction.
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What to expect

'I'M HOOKED . . . IT'S WONDERFUL. ONE NEVER MESSES WITH THE FAERIES' MELANIE REID, THE TIMES
'FEW BOOKS HAVE THIS IMPACT ON ME' MICHELLE GALLEN, BIG GIRL SMALL TOWN

A spellbinding novel combining Scottish folklore with hidden history, by the Sunday Times bestselling author Sally Magnusson.

Loch Katrine waterworks, 1856. A Highland wilderness fast becoming an industrial wasteland. No place for a lady.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.

The hills echo with the gunpowder blasts of hundreds of navvies tunnelling day and night to bring clean water to diseased Glasgow thirty miles away - 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 again, Isabel can only wait. But a darker presence has also emerged from the gunpowder smoke. And he is waiting too.

Inspired by the mysterious death of the seventeenth-century minister Robert Kirke and set in a pivotal era two centuries later when engineering innovation flourished but women did not, The Ninth Child blends folklore with historical realism in a spellbinding narrative.

*PRAISE FOR THE SEALWOMAN'S GIFT*

'I enjoyed and admired it in equal measure' Sarah Perry
'An extraordinarily immersive read' Guardian
'Richly imagined and energetically told' Sunday Times
'An epic journey' Zoe Ball Book Club

(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Critics Review

  • Sally Magnusson’s classy new novel The Ninth Child has snared me . . . Suffice to say I’m hooked, and I’m only on page 50. It’s wonderful and I daren’t stop. One never messes with the faeries.

    Melanie Reid, THE TIMES

  • An absolute triumph! Such a clever interweaving of history and fairytale. I loved the lively intelligent heroine and the brooding sense of menace throughout. It had me gripped right to the end

    Sarah Haywood, author of THE CACTUS

  • Not only did the book transport me while I read, but when I slept my dreams were extraordinarily vivid – I dreamt I was roaming in the highlands, smelling fresh air, feeling sunlight – far from my hospital bed. Few books have this impact on me.

    Michelle Gallen, author of BIG GIRL SMALL TOWN

  • An engaging mix of folklore and Victorian history

    Sunday Times

  • This eerie tale blends Scottish folklore with historical fiction

    i

  • Pacy and accomplished, with a supernatural chill

    The Herald

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