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From the author of Indie Next Pick and New York Times Editors' Choice Goodnight, Beautiful Women comes a transportive and chilling debut novel of two sisters growing up on an isolated Northern European island in the shadow of their late mother and the Devil.
It’s 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island’s women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island’s dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of.
As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen. Ever capable Ulrika shoulders the burden of keeping house, while Bea, alone with unsettling visions and impulses, hungers for companionship and attention. When an enigmatic outsider arrives at their door, his presence threatens their family bond and unearths – piece by piece – a buried history to shocking ends. All the while Berggrund’s neighboring island the Blue Maiden beckons, storied home of the Witches’ Sabbath and Satan’s realm, its misted shore veiling truths the sisters have spent their lives searching for.
A Nordic Gothic laced with the horrors of life in a patriarchy both hostile to and reliant on its women, The Blue Maiden is a starkly beautiful depiction of lost lineage and resilience.
PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2024
ORDER from your local independent bookstore, or from:
Bookshop.org
Grove Atlantic
Barnes and Noble
Praise:
New York Times Editors' Choice
One of Publishers Weekly's "4 New Debut Novels By Women That We Loved"
An Odyssey Bookshop First Editions Club Selection
“Mesmerizing...The island of Berggrund is only an hour’s sail from the mainland, but in 1825 its superstitious inhabitants are as detached from the larger currents of Swedish life as they were 150 years earlier, when the community’s priest ordered most of its women put to death for witchcraft. Anna Noyes’s haunting first novel, The Blue Maiden, explores the sinister effects of this legacy on the two daughters of Silas, the island’s current pastor, a descendant of one of the few women to be spared.” — Alida Becker, New York Times, Editors' Choice
What I expected to find upon opening Anna Noyes’ debut novel The Blue Maiden was a story of sisters, a story of myths and traditions, a story brimming with nature and mystery. While all this is here within the pages, I found so much more brewing beneath the surface: how we understand one another, what we know to be true versus what we wish to be true, and, perhaps most importantly, what it means to be a woman who has been told what to believe her whole life…Within the walls of witchcraft, piety, and the determination to not forget the past, The Blue Maiden takes us to a haunting and hypnotizing island and dares us to explore.--Madeline Schultz, Chicago Review of Books
“Bracing… Noyes shows with incisive and imagistic prose how the specter of the eerie, ever-changing Blue Maiden hangs over the residents of Berggrund like a pall as the sisters come of age to face horrifying tragedies. Noyes evokes Shirley Jackson in this inspired and memorable gothic tale.”--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A novel about sisterhood, witch hunts, common cruelties, and survival, Anna Noyes’s The Blue Maiden pulses with earthy magic. ...Sifting through centuries of island life to reveal a splendid array of women’s heirlooms--tactile and otherwise--The Blue Maiden is a bewitching novel.”--Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword, Starred Review
“This debut novel churns with the smell of sea-damp wool, day-old bread, and elderflower-scented smoke . . . Noyes’ rich descriptions create a setting that, in all its consuming bleakness, is perfect for a story about the burdens of generational and gendered trauma . . . A twisting narrative of the horrors of patriarchal subordination that will appeal to fans of classic gothic novels.”--Kirkus Reviews
"Backdropped by the aura and lore of the island, Noyes’ captivating debut novel is a vivid journey into womanhood, self-discovery, and the bonds of family." --Leah Strauss, Booklist
Closely examined, the contents of Anna Noyes’s most recent novel The Blue Maiden is redolent of the contents of a toddler’s pockets: a curl of birch bark, the wing of a dragonfly, a seashell and a smooth stone; all treasures when observed at earnest. Step back and look at the whole of it, Anna’s prose is as magical as a full forest, lush and eerie, unsettling and exquisite, a natural work of pure art.--Mira Ptacin, LitHub
"A captivating Nordic gothic about a search for self. . . . Through mysterious and musical prose, Noyes delves into the folklore, paternalism, and superstition that keep women in their place, tied to the unforgiving religious beliefs of the time."--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Library Journal
“Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Other times, fiction can outrun truth, but when the two blend, as in The Blue Maiden from Anna Noyes, the impact can be doubly resonant . . . Noyes’s prose is lyrical, spare, carefully capturing the space between image and intention . . . The combination of what happened all those years ago, blended with what Noyes imagines, is bewitching.”--Petoskey News-Review
“Captivating . . . A (literally) spellbinding Gothic tale of generational trauma with a feminist resonance that will delight readers of Shirley Jackson and Nordic historical fiction.”--Center for Fiction
“This perfect book stands all on its own. It is so finely crafted, every word is essential, incantatory. Terrifying, but real. I loved it so much.”--Jenny Slate, author of Little Weirds
“Anna Noyes writes like a witch. The Blue Maiden is a shimmering spell of a novel: mesmerizing, beautiful, and alive with pain, wonder, rage and love. The misty island followed me into my dreams and the sisters stayed with me long after I closed the cover. Simply stunning.”--Emma Törzs, author of Ink Blood Sister Scribe
"A spectacular novel of sisterly devotion and the sacred bonds formed of loss and secrecy. What a gift Noyes has bequeathed to us, her readers, and to the sub-genre of modern witcherature. Stole the sleep from my eyes until the early hours. It is such a great book and I cannot wait for people to discover it. Such skill and technique, and a *lot* of story in this slender volume. Pure sorcery, I don’t know how she did this. Impressive!” --Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, author of Dazzling
“This extraordinary novel turned me ravenous; I read in rapture, in awe. Noyes shows how lore sustains us, just as it stifles, and how the pain we inherit shapes who we become. Every sentence is resplendent, assured; every scene gripping and intimate. An exquisite homage to sisterhood, a treasure, a masterpiece.”--Claire Luchette, author of Agatha of Little Neon
“A breathtaking story of sisterhood and secrets that gripped me from page one. Beata and Ulrika are magnetic, and their coming-of-age on wild Berggrund Island is a tale unlike any other, full of astonishing twists. The Blue Maiden is a knockout by a writer at the height of her exquisite powers.”--Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“The Blue Maiden contains a radiant mythology, a web of nature, eros, death and birth. It is partly a young girl’s coming of age in the mid-nineteenth century, and partly a treatise of the wildness in women. There are witch trials, poisons, ghostly islands, superstitious lore, madness and suffering. But it’s Anna Noyes’s absolutely dazzling prose, each sentence wrought like iron, that gives this novel a stunning pathos and depth far beyond a gothic fairy tale. The Blue Maiden haunted me long after I put it down.”--Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
The Blue Maiden is both a mysterious island in the Nordic Seas which looms large on the horizon of the novel's protagonists, and a parable about the fraught intersection between organized religion (with its patriarchal drive) and nature/paganism (centering the power of birth and regeneration). Anna Noyes beautifully interweaves these elements…a fantastic Nordic Folk Horror that seeps with atmosphere and dread.--Jesse Hassinger, First Editions Club, Odyssey Bookshop
It’s 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island’s women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island’s dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of.
As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen. Ever capable Ulrika shoulders the burden of keeping house, while Bea, alone with unsettling visions and impulses, hungers for companionship and attention. When an enigmatic outsider arrives at their door, his presence threatens their family bond and unearths – piece by piece – a buried history to shocking ends. All the while Berggrund’s neighboring island the Blue Maiden beckons, storied home of the Witches’ Sabbath and Satan’s realm, its misted shore veiling truths the sisters have spent their lives searching for.
A Nordic Gothic laced with the horrors of life in a patriarchy both hostile to and reliant on its women, The Blue Maiden is a starkly beautiful depiction of lost lineage and resilience.
PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2024
ORDER from your local independent bookstore, or from:
Bookshop.org
Grove Atlantic
Barnes and Noble
Praise:
New York Times Editors' Choice
One of Publishers Weekly's "4 New Debut Novels By Women That We Loved"
An Odyssey Bookshop First Editions Club Selection
“Mesmerizing...The island of Berggrund is only an hour’s sail from the mainland, but in 1825 its superstitious inhabitants are as detached from the larger currents of Swedish life as they were 150 years earlier, when the community’s priest ordered most of its women put to death for witchcraft. Anna Noyes’s haunting first novel, The Blue Maiden, explores the sinister effects of this legacy on the two daughters of Silas, the island’s current pastor, a descendant of one of the few women to be spared.” — Alida Becker, New York Times, Editors' Choice
What I expected to find upon opening Anna Noyes’ debut novel The Blue Maiden was a story of sisters, a story of myths and traditions, a story brimming with nature and mystery. While all this is here within the pages, I found so much more brewing beneath the surface: how we understand one another, what we know to be true versus what we wish to be true, and, perhaps most importantly, what it means to be a woman who has been told what to believe her whole life…Within the walls of witchcraft, piety, and the determination to not forget the past, The Blue Maiden takes us to a haunting and hypnotizing island and dares us to explore.--Madeline Schultz, Chicago Review of Books
“Bracing… Noyes shows with incisive and imagistic prose how the specter of the eerie, ever-changing Blue Maiden hangs over the residents of Berggrund like a pall as the sisters come of age to face horrifying tragedies. Noyes evokes Shirley Jackson in this inspired and memorable gothic tale.”--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A novel about sisterhood, witch hunts, common cruelties, and survival, Anna Noyes’s The Blue Maiden pulses with earthy magic. ...Sifting through centuries of island life to reveal a splendid array of women’s heirlooms--tactile and otherwise--The Blue Maiden is a bewitching novel.”--Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword, Starred Review
“This debut novel churns with the smell of sea-damp wool, day-old bread, and elderflower-scented smoke . . . Noyes’ rich descriptions create a setting that, in all its consuming bleakness, is perfect for a story about the burdens of generational and gendered trauma . . . A twisting narrative of the horrors of patriarchal subordination that will appeal to fans of classic gothic novels.”--Kirkus Reviews
"Backdropped by the aura and lore of the island, Noyes’ captivating debut novel is a vivid journey into womanhood, self-discovery, and the bonds of family." --Leah Strauss, Booklist
Closely examined, the contents of Anna Noyes’s most recent novel The Blue Maiden is redolent of the contents of a toddler’s pockets: a curl of birch bark, the wing of a dragonfly, a seashell and a smooth stone; all treasures when observed at earnest. Step back and look at the whole of it, Anna’s prose is as magical as a full forest, lush and eerie, unsettling and exquisite, a natural work of pure art.--Mira Ptacin, LitHub
"A captivating Nordic gothic about a search for self. . . . Through mysterious and musical prose, Noyes delves into the folklore, paternalism, and superstition that keep women in their place, tied to the unforgiving religious beliefs of the time."--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Library Journal
“Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Other times, fiction can outrun truth, but when the two blend, as in The Blue Maiden from Anna Noyes, the impact can be doubly resonant . . . Noyes’s prose is lyrical, spare, carefully capturing the space between image and intention . . . The combination of what happened all those years ago, blended with what Noyes imagines, is bewitching.”--Petoskey News-Review
“Captivating . . . A (literally) spellbinding Gothic tale of generational trauma with a feminist resonance that will delight readers of Shirley Jackson and Nordic historical fiction.”--Center for Fiction
“This perfect book stands all on its own. It is so finely crafted, every word is essential, incantatory. Terrifying, but real. I loved it so much.”--Jenny Slate, author of Little Weirds
“Anna Noyes writes like a witch. The Blue Maiden is a shimmering spell of a novel: mesmerizing, beautiful, and alive with pain, wonder, rage and love. The misty island followed me into my dreams and the sisters stayed with me long after I closed the cover. Simply stunning.”--Emma Törzs, author of Ink Blood Sister Scribe
"A spectacular novel of sisterly devotion and the sacred bonds formed of loss and secrecy. What a gift Noyes has bequeathed to us, her readers, and to the sub-genre of modern witcherature. Stole the sleep from my eyes until the early hours. It is such a great book and I cannot wait for people to discover it. Such skill and technique, and a *lot* of story in this slender volume. Pure sorcery, I don’t know how she did this. Impressive!” --Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, author of Dazzling
“This extraordinary novel turned me ravenous; I read in rapture, in awe. Noyes shows how lore sustains us, just as it stifles, and how the pain we inherit shapes who we become. Every sentence is resplendent, assured; every scene gripping and intimate. An exquisite homage to sisterhood, a treasure, a masterpiece.”--Claire Luchette, author of Agatha of Little Neon
“A breathtaking story of sisterhood and secrets that gripped me from page one. Beata and Ulrika are magnetic, and their coming-of-age on wild Berggrund Island is a tale unlike any other, full of astonishing twists. The Blue Maiden is a knockout by a writer at the height of her exquisite powers.”--Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“The Blue Maiden contains a radiant mythology, a web of nature, eros, death and birth. It is partly a young girl’s coming of age in the mid-nineteenth century, and partly a treatise of the wildness in women. There are witch trials, poisons, ghostly islands, superstitious lore, madness and suffering. But it’s Anna Noyes’s absolutely dazzling prose, each sentence wrought like iron, that gives this novel a stunning pathos and depth far beyond a gothic fairy tale. The Blue Maiden haunted me long after I put it down.”--Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
The Blue Maiden is both a mysterious island in the Nordic Seas which looms large on the horizon of the novel's protagonists, and a parable about the fraught intersection between organized religion (with its patriarchal drive) and nature/paganism (centering the power of birth and regeneration). Anna Noyes beautifully interweaves these elements…a fantastic Nordic Folk Horror that seeps with atmosphere and dread.--Jesse Hassinger, First Editions Club, Odyssey Bookshop