Company of Liars » (Bargain)

Karen Maitland has a doctorate in psycholinguistics. She traveled and worked in many parts of the world, from the Arctic Circle to Africa, before finally settling in the medieval city of Lincoln in England. Her British debut novel, The White Room, was short-listed for the Authors’ Club of Great Britain Best First Novel Award. She is at work on her next novel, The Owl Killers.

In this extraordinary novel, Karen Maitland delivers a dazzling reinterpretation of Chaucer s Canterbury Tales an ingenious alchemy of history, mystery, and powerful human drama.

The year is 1348. The Black Plague grips the country. In a world ruled by faith and fear, nine desperate strangers, brought together by chance, attempt to outrun the certain death that is running inexorably toward them.

Each member of this motley company has a story to tell. From Camelot, the relic-seller who will become the group s leader, to Cygnus, the one-armed storyteller . . . from the strange, silent child called Narigorm to a painter and his pregnant wife, each has a secret. None is what they seem. And one among them conceals the darkest secret of all propelling these liars to a destiny they never saw coming.

Magical, heart-quickening, and raw, Company of Liars is a work of vaulting imagination from a powerful new voice in historical...

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Maitland's…narrative strength is her skill at setting scenes that connect the harsh realities of medieval life with the no less cruel pagan customs and Christian rituals meant to explain and contain those realities. At every stop, the travelers become participants in some sad or horrific event, from the macabre "cripples' wedding" meant to fend off disease to the live burial of a suspected witch. Throughout it all, they remain pariahs, abandoned outside the walls of the not-so-civilized society of their day. No wonder they told stories to keep themselves warm.