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HILD
GRIFFITH, NICOLA
Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually
violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods’ priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots
to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is
the king’s youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of
seeing the world—of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and
predicting what will happen next—that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She
establishes herself as the king’s seer. And she is indispensable—until she should ever lead the king
astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who
seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future. Hild is a young woman
at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age—all of it brilliantly and
accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith’s luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary
Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal world—and
one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby—to vivid,
absorbing life.
FICTION 1ST PRINTING 75,000
FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX
560 PAGES
9780374280871
$31.00 HC
NOVEMBER 2013
THE HIRED MAN
FORNA, AMINATTA
Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of
war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it. With
The Hired Man, she has delivered a tale of a Croatian village after the War of Independence, and a family
of newcomers who expose its secrets. Duro is off on a morning’s hunt when he sees something one
rarely does in Gost: a strange car. Later that day, he overhears its occupants, a British woman, Laura,
and her two children, who have taken up residence in a house Duro knows well. He offers his assistance
getting their water working again, and soon he is at the house every day, helping get it ready as their
summer cottage, and serving as Laura’s trusted confidant. But the other residents of Gost are not as
pleased to have the interlopers, and as Duro and Laura’s daughter Grace uncover and begin to restore a
mosaic in the front that has been plastered over, Duro must be increasingly creative to shield the family
from the town’s hostility, and his own past with the house’s former occupants. As the inhabitants of Gost
go about their days, working, striving to better themselves and their town, and arguing, the town’s volatile
truths whisper ever louder.
FICTION
ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
9780802121912
$26.50 HC
OCTOBER 2013
304 PAGES