Maiden

The Times bestseller'A masterpiece' – Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal 'Exceptional — a tense, thrilling investigation, with a decidedly feminist slant' – Daily MailInspired by a real-life case, Kate Foster's The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history. Winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award 2022 and the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year 2023. In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess. Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn't the only woman in Forrester's life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .'Riveting . . . the tension persists until the last page’ — The Times

The Maiden is a masterpiece. A thrilling historical murder tale but so much more. Vivid, evocative and full of humanity. I took each and every character to my heart. The fact this is inspired by a true story makes it all the more chilling and relevant. I was transported to seventeenth-century Edinburgh so completely, I’m sure a part of me is still there, This riveting debut novel by Kate Foster takes the true story of the murder [of James Forrester] and spins it into a mystery full of twists . . . Christian and Violet leap from the page, and Foster plays with the reader’s ideas about guilt and innocence. She is clever, too, on how women can become complicit in their abuse. The tension persists until the last page, Kate Foster expands the slender facts of the case into something exceptional — a tense, thrilling investigation, with a decidedly feminist slant. Foster recreates the Edinburgh of 1679 with great aplomb. A mucky, malodorous place, where a man's sexual proclivities are a given and a woman's are judged immoral, as revealed by the testimony of fierce Christian and the irrepressible Violet, a prostitute, who's all too familiar with Forrester, the world and its ways, Threat hangs over every page like the awaiting guillotine, but the women in this book gleam sharper. Witty, gritty and full of heart, their voices rise through the brutality and hardship of seventeenth-century Edinburgh, battling to be heard, Foster’s imaginary Edinburgh is cinematic with its flashbacks and switches in perspective . . . The language and pace of The Maiden is fluent and driving . . . I was quickly gripped. Offers to film Foster’s novel should follow if there’s any sense in this world . . . This is an extremely promising debut by Foster

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. Her first novel, The Maiden, a feminist revisionist take on the Scottish legend of The White Lady of Corstorphine, won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect competition in 2020 and the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year in 2023. The King's Witches is her second novel. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.

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