The Second Best Whore in Town

a modern-day seal wife loses the one magical object that could free her to return to her own life. Drawing on years of research into chronicles, ballads, manuscripts, and the half-remembered lore of Scotland's past, Mairi Kidd brings to life women both historical and imagined, their voices resonant with courage, cunning, and rebellion. A noblewoman defies a priest. A countess claims her husband's heart. A 'witch' becomes a moneylender. A harlot banks her gold. A widow turns propagandist. A princess takes up her pen.Inspired by real women, real events and the historical record, these stories breathe life into figures who survive only in fragments, scattered through manuscripts, ballads and song. Vivid, moving and richly imagined, they reveal lives shaped by love and loss, ambition and adversity, courage and survival.Here are wise women, wenches and witches whose lives flicker between history and myth. Remembered in fragments and half-told tales, they return here as daughters, lovers, dreamers, rebels and survivors, their voices rising once more from the silences of the past. The daughter of a warrior-king seeks induction into the wonders of the written word; a grieving widow refuses to part from her husband's heart; a modern-day seal wife loses the one magical object that could free her to return to her own life.Drawing on years of research into chronicles, ballads, manuscripts, and the half-remembered lore of Scotland's past, Mairi Kidd brings to life women both historical and imagined, their voices resonant with courage, cunning, and rebellion. Whether confronting the constraints of marriage, the dangers of clan feuds, or the injustices of the law, these characters refuse to be mere footnotes in the tales of men. This unforgettable collection draws together nine new short stories of survival, rebellion, and magic by the acclaimed author of The Specimens and Poor Creatures, Mairi Kidd.

Pagina's: 240, Hardcover, Bonnier Books UK Limited