The Familiars by Stacey Halls is set to be the debut novel of 2019. Based on the infamous seventeenth-century Pendle witch trials in Lancashire, the novel was the subject of a fierce nine-way publisher auction. This page-turner tells the story of two women – a gentlewoman and her midwife – whose lives become inextricably and perilously linked at the time of the notorious witch trials of 1612, as a result of which eight women and two men were executed. The book has been compared to The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton and The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. Stacey Halls hails from Lancashire and is based in London where she also works as a journalist. She will be in conversation with broadcaster Deirdre Hurley.
