"Treasure, financial hardship, and pirate mistique [sic] all add to a cleverly woven tale of uncommon honor in the face of insideous treachery that stretches from the days of cutlasses and muskets to our own."--Page 4 of cover.

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a spell of frost or snow so severe that it seems as if spring and summer will never return. This is what country people call a blackthorn winter. For Claudia Barron, the blackthorn winter of that particular April is like a metaphor for her whole life: for the end of glamour, financial security and marriage. Her rich and powerful husband has been sent to prison, leaving her homeless and virtually penniless. Hopeless to cling to the remnants of her old life, pointless to stand by a man who has betrayed her in almost every way a man can betray a woman. Instead she goes into hiding, buys the only house she can afford in the Dorset village of Court Barton - a hideous bungalow built in an old kitchen garden - and changes her name. Under a cloak of anonymity she sets out to get herself a job in the local school. But villages don't much like anonymity and before very long Claudia finds herself drawn into the gossip and the grumbling, the lives and loves and quarrels of Court Barton in a way that she had never expected. In the end, Sarah Challis deftly shows that Blackthorn winters always give way to hopeful springs.

With her parents on a trial separation, the last thing fifteen-year-old Juliana wants is to be dragged by her mother to an artists' colony in England. Halfway across the world, Juliana misses her father terribly. But soon she has bigger worries when the sleepy town of Blackthorn is set on its heels by the murder of one of its own. Juliana feels compelled to solve the crime, but she is shocked and frightened when she uncovers clues that have chilling parallels to her own mysterious past. Can she figure out who the murderer is before anyone else--herself included--gets hurt?

This tale of four fey sisters is “a golden slice of British rural fantasy in the tradition of Diana Wynne Jones and Tanith Lee. . . . I loved it” (Paul Cornell, New York Times–bestselling author of Witches of Lychford). Levelheaded Bee still lives at Mooncote, the family home in Somerset, where she has an unconventional boyfriend of whom her sisters are unaware. Stella, a DJ who’s just done some gigs in Ibiza, has vowed never to return to Mooncote after a row with Bee. Single mother and fashion designer Serena lives in Notting Hill with growing doubts about her relationship with her longtime boyfriend, a rock musician. And Luna, the youngest, is a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows a trail of horse fairs across the country. The four Fallow sisters are scattered like the four winds. But now, with the comet due, they’re drawn back together, united in their desire to find their mother, free-spirited Alys, who disappeared a year ago. They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and is hardly the most dependable of guides . . . “In Comet Weather, Liz Williams has crafted something marvellous. This is a book full of wonder, horror, love, heartbreak, strangeness, and a gorgeously evoked sense of time and place. Between one page and the next you’ll be laughing out loud, then shivering to your bones.” —Alastair Reynolds, award-winning author of Eversion and Revelation Space “This quick-witted and intriguing contemporary fantasy is fresh and original, while also harking back to the mythology of the English landscape and the classic literature that has inspired. A many-faceted delight.” —Juliet E. McKenna, author of the Green Man series “A perfect pleasure to read. Think [Neil] Gaiman: imagination enriched with history, culture, geography, astronomy and archaeology, and a dash of romance.” —Aurealis “One of the most affecting and accomplished fantasy novels of the year so far.” —Locus “Mesmerizing.” —SciFi Mind

Young Stephen Monroe must decide on which side of the American Revolution he will take part.

In 1666, after four months away, friends Christopher Rowe, Tom, and Sally return to London triumphantly but, guided by coded riddles, face a conspiracy that threatens Christopher, as well as the King himself.