By day, a drab pole barn used as general store, post office and meeting place all-in-one by the people of Runde, Minnesota, a fishing village on the North Shore of Lake Superior. By night, a Viking-style long house filled with tales and singing, roasting meat and flowing beer, and of course mead. Ingrid Torfa can imagine no better place for a much-needed night of R&R. The mead hall run by her grandmother lies where modern small town life brushes up against the old world lifestyle of the people of Villmark, proud descendants of a lost tribe of Northmen. All of her friends mingle there from the server who works in the restaurant on the side of the highway to the guardians charged with protecting the sacred flame of their ancestors. The spells that her grandmother casts over her mead hall nightly keep everyone within safe and harmonious. Or so everyone always believed. But when a murder interrupts Ingrid's night off, she finds herself questioning everything. Because her chief suspect is her own grandmother. Corpse in the Mead Hall, Book 6 in the Viking Witch Mystery Series!

Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates the exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of southern Sweden. Combines myth, Christian and pagan elements, and history into a powerful narrative. Genealogies.

Spring, the season of renewal, finally arrives on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and Ingrid Torfa finds herself in a strange new situation. On vacation. She and her grandmother spend their days resting and recuperating in an old cabin overlooking the shores of Lake Superior. She can see modern ships pass by along the shipping lanes on the horizon. But everything around her? Strictly from the Viking Age. Not even the lost Norse village of Villmark lies so far in the past as this lonely cabin. But her restful vacation comes to a sudden end when a stranger knocks on their door. His presence disrupts their quiet lakeside lives even before he turns up dead. Now Ingrid must figure out who wanted the strange old man dead. Because the next target just might be her.

By day, a drab pole barn used as general store, post office and meeting place all-in-one by the people of Runde, Minnesota, a fishing village on the North Shore of Lake Superior. By night, a Viking-style long house filled with tales and singing, roasting meat and flowing beer, and of course mead. Ingrid Torfa can imagine no better place for a much-needed night of R&R. The mead hall run by her grandmother lies where modern small town life brushes up against the old world lifestyle of the people of Villmark, proud descendants of a lost tribe of Northmen. All of her friends mingle there from the server who works in the restaurant on the side of the highway to the guardians charged with protecting the sacred flame of their ancestors. The spells that her grandmother casts over her mead hall nightly keep everyone within safe and harmonious. Or so everyone always believed. But when a murder interrupts Ingrid's night off, she finds herself questioning everything. Because her chief suspect is her own grandmother. Corpse in the Mead Hall, Book 6 in the Viking Witch Mystery Series!

Ingrid Torfudottir lives in two worlds at once. The first, Runde, lies on the banks of Lake Superior, a town of northern Minnesotans who descend from Scandinavian immigrants, fishermen and farmers both. In that world she barely exists, just an unknown aspiring book illustrator who occasionally sells a little art at the local café.The other, Villmark, lies hidden from the rest of the world by ancient, strong magic. The people of the village descend from colonists who fled their homeland in Norway centuries before. In that world she bears great responsibilities. As a volva, a Viking witch, the protection of her people always comes first in her life.These two worlds overlap in just one place: her grandmother's mead hall. After sitting abandoned for months, Ingrid and her grandmother open it again to much celebration in both communities.But then everything goes wrong. The illusions and protections remain despite their efforts at the end of the night. And Ingrid can't get back to Villmark.Then someone dies, a murder. As if Ingrid didn't have enough on her plate.

This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. "An extraordinary achievement."—New York Times The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."

Winter has come to the lost Norse village of Villmark, the wind and snow separating cozy house from cozy house like a knife breaks apart shortbread.And for the first time in her life, Ingrid Torfa lives alone. No mother, no grandmother, no roommate. Just a big, empty house and a cat who loves to disappear. Magical studies fill her every waking hour, and yet those hours stretch out in unbroken silence.Until a scream rents the night, drawing every neighbor out into the cold streets. A woman lies dead at the bottom of the well. It looks like an accident to the villagers, but to Ingrid it feels like a murder.Luckily, Ingrid knows just the friends to help her solve the mystery. Not even the bite of winter can stop them from uncovering the truth.