Hazel is an archaeologist, working in Unst, on the most northerly coast of the Shetland Isles. She’s digging on Ishabel’s land. Ishabel is a retired professor of botany, and one of the remaining three Shetland witches, together with Maggie the artist who's getting too informal about form-changing in public, and Avril the wildlife warden with too many birds to guard. Maggie discovers that Hazel can also be magical, and she becomes a Shetland witch. Then Atropos arrives, to look for her shears that she despatched into hiding to the ends of the earth hundreds of years in the past. She has to protect them from Zeus. How will the witches protect the islands from a Fate and Zeus? How will Hazel learn to do magic again? How will she cope with Tornost, a malignant trow with a penchant for eighteenth-century manners? The Shetland Witch is a novel about dwelling within the north, Wood Ranger shears about sisterhood and belonging, and the power that girls wield when they work collectively.

As previous and present collide, we're reminded that historical past, nevertheless old and legendary, is at all times with us. There may be an idea of ‘thin places’ the place the borders between the heavens and the earth are a bit closer than elsewhere. You go somewhere and just really feel this is the place magic could happen. In Kate Macdonald’s fascinating novel The Shetland Witch (with the added title Or, Atropos Wants Her Wood Ranger shears Back) takes us to the modern day Shetland Isles and right here we discover a place the place magic is actual