Summer Country

Maureen Pierce works the night shift in a convenience store, carries a .38 Smith & Wesson in her pocket, and talks to trees. She knows enough clinical psychology to think that when the trees answer, it proves she's crazy. She can live with that. She manages to get by in a world where she doesn't really fit, until the truth reaches out to touch her as she slogs home through the slushy midnight sidewalks of a February sleet storm. That truth offers a seductive promise of warmth and sun, green growing things and trees that really do answer when she talks to them. It tells her that she isn't truly human. Now her blood heritage drags her from Maine into ancient myth three steps away from the modern world, with all the claws and teeth and cruelty intact. Camelot is dead. Arthur is dead. Law is dead. Power rules the Summer Country of Celtic myth, behind the Old Blood faces of beast-master Dougal, dark witch Fiona, and her cunning, treacherous twin brother Sean. Their plots entangle and threaten Maureen's sister Jo, Jo's human lover David, and Brian Albion -- the enigmatic Old Blood knight of the warrior Pendragons, who Maureen trusts about as far as she can throw him. Maureen can become either a slave or a mighty witch, but her own dark past may be her worst enemy.

Legendary Somerset, England, the famed location of Avalon, the Tor of Ynis Witrin, and Glastonbury, is the location of this trilogy of historical fiction The Summer Country, which transports readers into three extraordinary eras of time spanning fifteen hundred years. As unforgettable characters grapple with universal challenges of the human heart, these classic stories weave vivid tapestries of mythology, fact and fiction. The Company of Avalon is a true story of famed Glastonbury Abbey, and the abbey's secrets, during the reign of Henry VIII-a dynamic era that has enthralled filmmakers, writers, readers, and historians for decades and even centuries. My story opens in 1538 and follows the journey of Richard Whiting and his courageous companions-the stewards of impossibly rare artifacts that have been, safeguarded for millennia within the abbey by an inner circle called the "Company of Avalon." Struggling to find a way through the king's brutal religious reform, in a race against time and the king's gallows, Abbot Whiting defies the madman, Henry VIII, while he and his companions collude in secret to remove the treasures (including the bones of King Arthur and relics brought by Joseph of Arimathea) to a remote isle of Scotland. Full of danger, action and intrigue, rich characters, myth and magic, the story unfolds secrets and mysteries behind the bones, Joseph's relics, and the veneration of Mary Magdalene, along with the grave consequences of their bold mission. The saga of the conspirators in Book One sets the stage for the prequel that follows, The Queen's Tale, Book Two of The Summer Country series. Rich historical detail, The Queen's Tale takes us back a thousand years in time, to the complex world of sixth century Briton and a retelling of the Arthurian legend, where Celtic traditions are still at odds, with the influences of Rome and fast paced action is, laced with the struggle for power, intrigue, betrayal, death and a love, that transcends all barriers. As the noble sovereign of her people, Gwenhyfar finds herself caught in complex relationships with Arthur and Lancelot in a timeless story of unforgettable characters painted in vibrant colors. Firmly established on both factual and mythical ground, The Queen's Tale delves into magical realms and creates exciting, multilayered links between The Company of Avalon, Book One, and Book Three, When Swans Fly. When Swans Fly, takes us further back in time to the south of France at the pivotal moment when Mariamne of Magdala (Mary Magdalen) takes refuge in southern Gaul six years after the execution of her husband, a radical mystic rabbi named Yeshua, known since his death as the Christos. After crossing the Mediterranean Sea, she comes ashore with her daughter Sarah and a group of companions including her uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, and makes way toward the mountains where they will join Yeshua's disciple, Phillip, in exile. Soon after Mary goes to live in a cave high on a nearby mountain, where the goddess Artemis has been, worshipped for centuries, by the local Celts and Greeks, Joseph leaves for Ynis Witrin (Glastonbury) in the Summer Country of ancient Briton. A complex mingling of worlds occurs as Joseph makes his home near the Tor and befriends Avalon, the Lady of Lake and her mysterious druid counterpart, and a heroic Celtic world preparing for inevitable war, in the coming martial intrusion of the Roman Empire.

"Happily ever after" doesn't always work, even in fairy tales. Maureen Pierce has won her castle, her man, and her powers, after terrible suffering in THE SUMMER COUNTRY. She has won a host of fierce enemies as well -- among them, the powerful dark witch Fiona and the deadly black dragon Khe'sha, who plot vengeance. Many of the Old Blood fear the change that she brings to the Summer Country of Celtic myth, and the warrior Pendragons believe that her lover, Brian Albion, has betrayed their secrets. If that wasn't bad enough, Maureen hates her castle for the pain she suffered there. She fears her new-found powers. The ghosts of old trauma still haunt her and those close to her -- Brian, her sister Jo, and Jo's lover, the human bard David. Against that, Maureen has the love of the Wildwood, the tangled, dangerous, above all magical forest surrounding the castle she won. She and those with her have honor -- a strange and rare and powerful concept in the Summer Country. Holding her place turns out to be as hard as winning it, and she's going to need help. Sometimes, that can come from where it's least expected.