Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a breathtaking story of love, evil, and obsession, at the ever dark edge of civilisation. 'Gripping, beautiful and chilling' Madeline Miller, author of Circe 'The Mercies took my breath away' Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring 'A book for our times . . . Millwood Hargrave is a whirlwind, storm-building talent' Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under On Christmas Eve, 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a reckless storm. As Maren Magnusdatter watches, forty fishermen, including her father and brother, are lost to the waves, the menfolk of Vardø wiped out in an instant. Now the women must fend for themselves. Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take control of a place at the edge of the civilized world, Absalom Cornet knows what he needs to do to bring the women of Vardø to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa finds something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty and terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs. Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, The Mercies is a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community, and a love that may prove as dangerous as it is powerful.