The second John Dee novel  is out now.

Hardback, ebook.

All talk is of the End-time... and the dead are rising...

At the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth.

Did Dudley’s wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it a calculated murder? Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudley’s oldest friends, is uncertain.

Already depressed by his meagre income, the taint of sorcery and the loss of his first love, the bookish Dee is now becoming afraid that, for him, the veils of perception will never lift. Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his family’s old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited with tuning the mind to higher realms.

With Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England. They travel with the entourage of a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas, in which close to a thousand Englishmen died at the hands of the Welsh. After the battle, many of the bodies were, according to legend, obscenely multilated. Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed.

Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father.

And then a vicious trap is sprung.

‘Oh Glastonbury, Glastonbury... the Threasory of the

carcasses of so famous and so many rare persons...

how Lamentable is thy case now?’

Dr John Dee.

In paperback from CORVUS at the sign of the raven, PHIL RICKMAN’S FIRST HISTORICAL NOVEL  with extraordinary revelations about the secret investigations of the astrologer royal to Queen Elizabeth I,  DR JOHN DEE

                                

‘A great story... ritual murder, necromancy, witchcraft - it’s all here.’

THE GUARDIAN

The Bones of Avalon

‘Brilliantly imagined, grippingly executed.’

PETER MILLAR, THE TIMES

‘A celebrated crime writer... Rickman shows he can handle historical fiction, too, even when it involves subtle astrological and esoteric themes. Setting The Bones of Avalon in Glastonbury adds a splendid extra dimension.’

Neil Spencer, The Astrology Show

Tudor thrillers are thick on the ground n

nowadays, but this one is rather special.

A wonderfully assured leap into the sixteenth century.’ ANDREW TAYLOR, SPECTATOR

The Bones of Avalon

Long misunderstood, condemned as a sorcerer, John Dee 

is Elizabethan England’s forgotten hero. In 1560, the mild,

bookish Dee, consultant to the Queen, is sent to Glastonbury

to find the missing bones of King Arthur, whose legacy was

always so important to the Tudor line. With him - hardly

the safest companion - is his friend and former student,

Robert Dudley, a risk-taker, a wild card...and possibly the

Queen’s secret lover.

The mission takes Dee to the tangled roots of English magic,

into unexpected violence, prophetic darkness, the breathless

stirring of first love...

and the cold heart of a complex plot against Elizabeth

‘Chills, thrills and satisfies. A

fabulous read.’

The Huffington Post

PREVIOUSLY

The church on Brynglas... and the holy well, the tump (below)... and Dee (portrait by Master Craven)

‘Outstanding... a

fabulously murky

tale, full of dark

detail, gruesome

violence and

twisting plotlines’

JP Buxton,

DAILY MAIL

‘Interesting and enjoyable’

The Literary Review

‘A spiralling nightmare

...much recommended’

Eurocrime

‘A profound feeling for the hidden ways...’

Jake Kerridge,

DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘Ingenious.... a gripping storyteller’

SUNDAY TIMES