Thornyhold

Stewart, Mary

ISBN 10: 1444715054 ISBN 13: 9781444715057

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011

Synopsis

'A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors.' Harriet Evans

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.

The old house, with it tufts of rosy houseleek and the spreading gilt of the lichens, was beautiful. Even the prisoning hedges were beautiful, protective with their rusty thorns, their bastions of holly and juniper, and at the corners, like towers, their thick columns of yews.

About this title

Review:

This old-fashioned gothic romance is as good as they get. When Gilly's witch aunt leaves Thornyhold to her, a house in the middle of the woods, Gilly finds that she has inherited far more than she realized. Along with the house comes a cat, a still room filled with herbs (and a missing recipe book), an attic chamber with carrier pigeons (who have secret messages), and an attractive neighbor whose young son offers the sacred and unique blessing of friendship. But Thornyhold possesses far more than even these simple offerings. The place itself seems to convoke otherworldly gifts as well: Gilly cultivates the abilities to heal and to foresee the future once she makes Thornyhold her home. (For those fans of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, there is a Geilis the witch in this book, too.)

From the Inside Flap:

Gilly Ramsey's lonely childhood were brightened only by visits to his godmother, Geillis. When she died, suddenly, the grownup Gilly inherited her cottage, Thornyhold. But nothing about his godmother prepared him for the strange and sinister life that awaited him there....
From the Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1444715054
• ISBN 13: 9781444715057
• Binding: Unknown Binding
• Number of pages: 288