The sixth novel in the Hawkenlye series, A Dark Night Hidden, published November 2003. The distinctive cover should make it easy to spot. To give readers a small foretaste, here's an extract from the opening:

She saw them, those beloved companions. Saw their smiles, their love for her, for each other. She felt the warmth of their arms around her as they embraced her. She smelt lavender, that scent forever associated with the newcomers who had come from the south bearing the great news. And she heard the joyous sound of their voices raised in song. The hallucination was so vivid that she thought they were there. That, against all reason, they had come for her.
She raised her head from the foul sludge on the floor. She said, 'I'm here! I'm here!'
She believed herself to be shouting. But her voice emerged as a croak, barely audible.
'Here I am!' she cried again. 'Oh, don't go without me! Don't abandon me!'
Perhaps they didn't want her any more! Aghast, she put a blood- and dirt-stained hand to her mouth as if to stop the terrible thought. But then why should they want her, she who had betrayed them?
Reaching deep inside herself she found a louder voice. Some strength with which to thump the door. 'Please!' she cried.
After long moments of effort she had an answer. But it was not the one she was so desperately hoping for.
Footsteps sounded along the passage outside. Heavy footfalls, from large feet in stout boots. The woman's heart filled withhope and she raised herself so that her face was almost up to the small, mean grille let into the wood of the door.'I'm here!Oh, thank you, thank you...'
The brilliant flame of a torch scorched across her dark-adapted eyes.Covering them with her hands, she was suddenly flung backwards into the cell as the door was unlocked and thrust open.
Hope dying, she raised her head.
Above her stood not a beloved companion but her gaoler.

For those interested in the history behind some of the events depicted in the novel, an explanatory map has been prepared and will be shown on the website around Christmas time. It is intended that the map be studied only after the book has been read, for reasons which will become apparent.It might spoil the course of the story if readers were to know certain facts before Josse uncovers them...

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