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Genre:<\/strong> Historical fiction<\/p>\n Release Date: <\/strong>7th November 2016<\/p>\n Publisher: <\/strong>SilverWood Books Ltd<\/p>\n Plague-widow Alice atte Wode is desperate to find her missing daughter, but her neighbours are rebelling against their masters and their mutiny is hindering the search.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n June 1349. In a Hampshire village, the worst plague in England\u2019s history has wiped out half its population, including Alice atte Wode\u2019s\u00a0husband and eldest son. The plague arrived only days after Alice\u2019s daughter Agnes\u00a0mysteriously disappeared and it prevented the search for her.<\/p>\n Now the plague is over, the village is trying to return to normal life, but it\u2019s hard, with so much to do and so few left to do it. Conflict is growing between the manor and its tenants, as the workers realise their very scarceness means they\u2019re more valuable than before: they can demand higher wages, take on spare land, have a better life. This is the chance they\u2019ve all been waiting for!<\/p>\n Although she understands their demands, Alice\u00a0is disheartened that the search for Agnes is once more put on hold. But when one of the rebels is killed, and then the lord’s son is found murdered, it seems the two deaths may be connected, both to each other and to Agnes\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n EXTRACT<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Alice atte Wode, the Millers\u2019 closest neighbour, was feeding her hens when she heard Joan\u2019s first terrible anguished cries. Dropping her basket of seed, she ran to the Millers\u2019 cottage. She wanted to cry out too at what she found there: Thomas and Joan both on their knees, clasped together, with Peter\u2019s twisted body between them, sobbing as if the dam of their long pent-up emotions had burst. Alice breathed deeply to steady her nerves, for she didn\u2019t know how to offer any solace for the Millers\u2019 loss.<\/p>\n Not this time.<\/p>\n It was common enough for parents to lose children. It didn\u2019t mean you ever got used to their loss, or that you loved them any less than if they\u2019d lived. Few lost five children in as many months. But the Millers had. The prosperous family Alice knew only six months ago, with its noisy brood of six happy, healthy children, had been swiftly and brutally slaughtered by the great mortality.<\/p>\n Every family in Meonbridge had lost someone to the plague\u2019s vile grip \u2013 a father, a mother, a child \u2013 but no other family had lost five<\/em>.<\/p>\n The great mortality, sent by God, it was said, to punish the world for its sins, had torn the village apart. It had struck at random, at the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the innocent and the guilty. Some of its victims died coughing up blood, some with suppurating boils under their arms or next to their privy parts, some covered in dark, blackish pustules. A few recovered, but most did not and, after two or three days of fear and suffering, died in agony and despair, often alone and unshriven for the lack of a priest, when their loved ones abandoned them. After five months of terror, half of Meonbridge\u2019s people were dead.<\/p>\n When the foul sickness at last moved on, leaving the villagers to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, Thomas and Joan Miller went to church daily, to pray for their five dead children\u2019s souls, and give thanks to God for sparing Peter. Then the arrival of baby Maud just a few days ago had brought the Millers a bright ray of hope in the long-drawn-out darkness of their despair.<\/p>\n But Peter hadn\u2019t been spared after all.<\/p>\n BUY LINKS<\/u><\/p>\n http:\/\/amzn.to\/2hsaHbj<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk\/silverwood-bookshop<\/a><\/p>\n ABOUT CAROLYN HUGHES<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Carolyn Hughes was born in London, but has lived most of her life in Hampshire. After a first degree in Classics and English, she started her working life as a computer programmer, in those days a very new profession. It was fun for a few years, but she left to become a school careers officer in Dorset. But it was when she discovered technical authoring that she knew she had found her vocation. She spent the next few decades writing and editing all sorts of material, some fascinating, some dull, for a wide variety of clients, including an international hotel group, medical instrument manufacturers and the Government. She has written creatively for most of her adult life, but it was not until her children grew up and flew the nest, several years ago, that creative writing and, especially, writing historical fiction, took centre stage in her life. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Portsmouth University and a PhD from the University of Southampton.<\/p>\n Fortune<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Wheel <\/em>is her first published novel, and a sequel is under way.<\/p>\n Facebook: <\/strong>CarolynHughesAuthor<\/p>\n Twitter: <\/strong>@writingcalliope<\/p>\n![\"Fortune's](\"http:\/\/www.melanierobertson-king.com\/wp02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Carolyn-publicity-1024x1017.jpg\")
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