Philippa Gregory begins a sweeping new series with the story of a poor, uneducated midwife named Alinor who is tempted by a forbidden love affair, but all too aware of the dangers awaiting a woman who dares to step out of the place society carved for her.

Midsummer's Eve, 1648, England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches to every corner of the kingdom, even the remote Tidelands - the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the run and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. Suspected of posessing dark secrets in a suspicious country, Alinor's ambition and determination marks her out from her neighbours. But this is the time of witch-mania, when it is dangerous for a woman to be different....

Midsummer's Eve, 1648, England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches to every corner of the kingdom, even the remote Tidelands - the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the run and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. Suspected of possessing dark secrets in a suspicious country, Alinor's ambition and determination marks her out from her neighbors. But this is the time of witch-mania, when it is dangerous for a woman to be different ...

"#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory's new historical novel tracks the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice, and New England. Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted twenty-one years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favour of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse's poor owner Alinor has the one thing his money cannot buy-his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son Rob has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Alinor writes to her brother Ned, newly arrived in faraway New England and trying to make a life between the worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move toward inevitable war. Alinor tells him that she

"It is 1685. England is on the brink of a renewed civil war against the Stuart kings and many families are divided. Ned Ferryman cannot persuade his sister, Alinor, that he is right to return from America to join the rebel army. Alinor has been coaxed to save the queen from the coming siege. The rewards are life-changing: the family could return to their beloved Tidelands, and Alinor could rule where she was once lower than a servant. Alinor's son, Rob, is determined to stay clear of the war, but when he and his nephew set out to free Ned from execution for treason, they find themselves enmeshed in the creation of an impostor Prince of Wales--a surrogate baby to the queen"--