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“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.” — Billy Connolly
The Mourning Necklace

The Mourning Necklace

Author
Kate Foster
Year
2025
ISBN
978-1035052059
Buy / ViewAmazon

Inspired by an infamous real-life case, The Mourning Necklace is the unforgettable new feminist historical novel from the Women’s Prize-longlisted author of The Maiden, Kate Foster.

They said I would swing for the crime and I did . . . I wear the rope-mark like a mourning necklace.

1724. In a tavern just outside Edinburgh, the family of Maggie Dickson – hanged for the murder of her newborn child – drown their sorrows, mourning her death yet relieved she is gone. Shame haunts them; passers-by avert their eyes from her cheap coffin on its rickety cart.

But as her family pray her soul rests in peace, a figure appears at the door.

It is Maggie. She is alive.

Bruised and dazed, Maggie has little time for her family’s questions. All that matters to her is answering one: will they hang her twice?

About the Author

Kate Foster worked as a national newspaper journalist for more than twenty years before becoming an author. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. Her previous novels include The Maiden, which won the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The King’s Witches. The Mourning Necklace is her third novel. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.