The bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club pickThe Sunday Times Bestseller and BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick‘Dark, dramatic and full of danger’ - Daily MailThe storm comes in like a finger snap . . .1617. The sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm. A young woman, Maren, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.Vardø is now a place of women . . .Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet has been summoned to bring the women of the island to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In her new home, and in Maren, Ursa encounters something she has never seen before: independent women. But where Ursa finds happiness, even love, Absalom sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs . . .For readers of Circe and The Handmaid’s Tale, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Mercies is inspired by real historical events. It is a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community, about a love that could prove as dangerous as it is powerful.‘Chilling and page-turning’ - The Times‘Gripping’ - Madeline Miller‘Took my breath away’ - Tracy Chevalier‘A beautifully intimate story of friendship, love and hope’ - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain ‘Something rare and beautiful’ - Marian Keyes

The Mercies is both harrowing and beautiful. Through mesmerizing prose, Kiran Millwood Hargrave depicts the brutality of life for women on an isolated island in 1620 Norway during the witch trials. Yet amidst this horror and within the punishing landscape, she creates a set of brilliant characters and a moving love story full of tenderness and hope. This is a book to be savored and read time and again.--Jenny Quintana, author of The Missing Girl , The Mercies is storytelling at its most masterful. This is an exquisite tale of sisterhood, of love, of courage and of what happens when communities turn on each other. It is everything I could have desired in a book: beguiling plotting, stunning prose, and a profound understanding of human nature. I have nothing short of awe for Kiran Millwood Hargrave and all she has accomplished here. I raged, I laughed, I cried. I urge you to read this novel. --Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory, The Mercies smolders more intensely than a pyre, whirling history's ashes defiantly into the wind.--NPR.org, The Mercies is a beautifully written, disturbing and stressful read.--Tor.com, The Mercies is an exceptional work of historical fiction with a dramatic setting and perceptive insight into the rippling effects of extremism, as seen through the eyes of a carefully crafted cast of characters.--Bookpage

Kiran Millwood Hargrave (b. 1990) is an award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist. Her bestselling works for children include The Girl of Ink & Stars, and have won numerous awards including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, and the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year, and been shortlisted for prizes such as the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Blue Peter Best Story Award. The Mercies is is her first novel for adults. It won a Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Kiran lives by the river in Oxford, with her husband, artist Tom de Freston, and their rescue cat, Luna.