Limited Number of Signed Copies of Ashes & Stones Available

A limited number of signed copies of Ashes & Stones are available directly from me, here.

Praise for Ashes & Stones from Readers, critics and fellow writers:

Totally unputdownable —Seáinín McKenna 

Really recommend this fantastic book by @northseawitch…it’s breathtaking. On the memorialisation of those executed for witchcraft in Scotland and the politics surrounding their exploitation for the purpose of dark tourism. We need more work like this!

–Ben Nicholson, Warden of the Tower of London

Allyson Shaw’s Ashes & Stones is a remarkable book, one I imagine I will return to over the years when I want to be reminded of how magic works in literary form.

—Ariel Marken Jack, Songs from a River’s Edge

…attentive and reverant, grounded in place and presence…a book that listens as much as it tells. The lives of seventeenth-century women resonate alongside those of modern women navigating memory, inheritance, and belonging…an ongoing act of remembrance—one that invites readers to choose their ancestors consciously and responsibly….reminding us that landscapes remember even when official histories forget. 

—Chalres Martin, bestselling author of The Mountain Between Us. 

Shaw passes over centuries-old footsteps like fingers on Braille; the lilt of her voice on the page is lyrical magic.

–The New York Times

…atmospheric, scholarly – and gripping – Ashes & Stones… gives life to many of the women burned as witches in Scotland.  Shocking and important – it made me realise this hasn’t been done before, nor have I questioned why until now.

–Laline Paull, author of Pod and The Bees

Ashes & Stones is its own reminder of a dark period in Scotlands’s past, but also carries a warning for the present day…This is not the book you think it is, and it is all the better for it.

–Alistair Braidwood, Snack Magazine

A beautiful, tragic, life-affirming book weaving Scottish witch history with lived experience — more people need to read it. 🖤 @honestlybookedjulie📚 on booktok

It’s a brilliant read. Lyrical and haunting in no short order. Definitely recommend 🥰 @BrynhildrSigurdsbane

Ashes and stones cover reveal

The book cover of Ashes and Stones, showing an illustrated hand holding a herb robert flower, surrounded by thistles with a  moon in the corner.

I’m so pleased to share the gorgeous cover design for Ashes and Stones by Natalie Chen. The illustrator is Iain MacArthur.

It’s summer. I stand where perhaps Ellen stood, in this ground thick with new thistle and long grass. She would have ken this coast in all weathers: in the summer when it was as gentle as a lake and in the winter, with the high winds and stinging salt spray.’

Ashes and Stones is a moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and modern cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland. We visit modern memorials, roadside shrines and standing stones, and roam among forests and hedge mazes, folk lore and political fantasies. From fairy hills to forgotten caves, we explore a spellbound landscape.


Out 19 January, 2023. Preorder Now:

Available at Watersones

Blackwells (offers free shipping to the USA)

Bookshop.org

Amazon.co.uk

Join my Patreon as a Valiant Witness and receive a signed copy of Ashes & Stones. I ship worldwide.