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  • Weyward

Weyward

by Emilia Hart
Weyward by Emilia Hart
★ 7.30 (13)
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I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

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FantasyHistorical FictionMagical Realism
Release date: March 2023

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Emilia Hart

Emilia Hart

Emilia Hart is a British-Australian author whose novels blend historical fiction, folklore, Gothic atmosphere, and the supernatural, often tracing the lives of women separated by generations but connected by experiences that refuse to remain buried.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Hart studied English Literature and Law at the University of New South Wales before working as a lawyer in Sydney and London. Writing had long been part of her life, but her path toward becoming a novelist gathered momentum after she moved to the United Kingdom. She later studied novel writing with Curtis Brown Creative, and an early version of her debut was highly commended in the 2021 Caledonia Novel Award.

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Hart began writing Weyward while living in Cumbria during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The landscape of northern England, together with her interest in the history of witch trials and the ways women have faced violence and control across different periods, helped shape a story spanning several centuries. Published in 2023, Weyward follows three women whose lives are bound together by family history, the natural world, and an inheritance that carries more power than any of them initially understands.

The novel quickly found an international readership. Weyward became a New York Times bestseller and won two Goodreads Choice Awards, for Best Debut Novel and Best Historical Fiction. Its success established Hart as a distinctive voice in contemporary historical and Gothic fiction, particularly for readers drawn to stories where folklore and subtle supernatural elements emerge from real histories.

Her second novel, The Sirens, returned to many of the ideas that characterize her fiction while exchanging the woods and wild landscapes of Weyward for the sea. Drawing on legends of sirens, mermaids, and selkies, the novel moves between different periods and places, including nineteenth-century Australia, and explores sisterhood, inherited memory, transformation, and women's relationships with the natural world. The Sirens became both a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and was selected for the Good Morning America Book Club.

Across her novels, Hart is particularly interested in connections between women across time. Historical injustice, family secrets, female resilience, nature, folklore, and the persistence of the past recur throughout her work, while multiple timelines allow apparently separate lives to gradually reveal their connections. The result sits comfortably between historical fiction, Gothic fiction, magical realism, and fantasy, with the supernatural woven into stories that remain grounded in human experience.

Hart lives in London.

More books by Emilia Hart

The Sirens
★ 7.90 (10)

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