Tag: mermaids

The Otherworldly Bride Motif in British and Norse Folklore

British and Norse folklore often features otherworldly females, such as Selkies, mermaids, and swan-maidens, who become brides of mortal men. These shape-shifting beings usually dwell in water, embodying a connection between the natural and supernatural. Their stories typically involve a man charming or tricking the female away from her aquatic home, leading to marriage and children. Yet, a broken taboo or mistreatment forces her to return to the sea, symbolizing deeper themes of desire, loss, and the complexities of human relationships.

A version of this article appeared originally on the Ancient Origins website.

A common motif in British and Norse folklore is that of an otherworldly female, who is somehow captured or charmed by a mortal man to be his bride. The females are often therianthropes, that is shape-shifters, who seem to be part human and part animal, but their main attribute is always as an entity from a metaphysical otherworld, interacting with consensus reality in order to bridge the gap between the natural and the supernatural. These therianthropic females take many forms, such as Selkies (humanoids masquerading as seals), mermaids, and swan-maidens, and can also appear as magical women without any animal attributes, such as the lake faeries, but they are always found in bodies of water, a configuration that proves important in any attempt to interpret these folkloric motifs. The standard scheme of the stories is that the female is lured from her watery existence by a male, either through a ruse or by charm. They are married and will usually have children together. But at some point a taboo is broken or the female is mistreated, and she deserts her husband to return to the water, which always seems to represent the portal between the physical world and a non-material reality. As always with folklore, any deeply embedded motif such as this is designed to impart some timeless wisdom; allegorical, philosophical and psychological. The stories were always meant to be a good fireside yarn, but more importantly they were plugging into fundamental aspects of the human condition, as well as recording belief-systems that were disappearing into the past. The origins of these stories are usually medieval (although possibly even older), and sometimes appear in chronicles. But most were transmitted through an oral tradition and were not recorded in detail by folklorists until the 18th and 19th centuries.

Selkies

The folklore of Selkies comes mostly from northern Scotland, especially the islands of Shetland and Orkney, as well as the Faroe Islands, although the theme is also found in Ireland, Scandinavia and Germany. The name is derived from Selch, the Scots for grey seal, a species that is commonly found around the coastlines of these northern European countries. The Selkie therianthrope can be male or female, but the majority of the folklore involves a female creature, such as the typical example from the Faroe Islands: The legend of Kópakonan (‘seal woman’).This tale tells of a fisherman (in some versions a farmer) from Mikladalur on the Faroese island of Kalsoy who, after taking the advice of an island elder, sets up a watch on the shoreline on the thirteenth day of the month to catch sight of the Selkies, who it was said could only beach on this day. Sure enough, he witnesses a group of the creatures come ashore and shed their seal-skins to reveal their female human forms. He steals one of the skins, and puts fright to the females, who all return to the sea in Selkie form. All except the one denuded of her skin. She’s distraught but agrees to follow the fisherman back to his home, where she proceeds to become his wife, and they have children together. But she pines for the sea, and one day manages to find the key to the room where her husband has kept her Selkie skin. She skins up, shape shifts and returns to the sea. As with most Selkie folklore, the story has a grim denouement, when the fisherman (despite being warned not to in a dream) kills the Selkie husband of his estranged wife as well as their two sons. Kópakonan takes revenge by cursing the people of Kalsoy: “some shall be drowned, some shall fall from cliffs and slopes, and this shall continue, until so many men have been lost that they will be able to link arms around the whole island of Kalsoy.” A statue of Kópakonan was erected in Mikladalur in 2014 (cover image), demonstrating the continuing importance of the folktale to the Faroese people.

The entities known as mermaids (or merrows from Hiberno-English) seem to be closely related to the Selkie, and there are collections of stories from Scotland and Ireland including similar motifs contained in the Selkie tales, where the female mermaid is captured and made a wife, only to return to the sea when she is given the opportunity. However, mermaids more often than not retain their half-human half-fish form, and only a minority of the stories have them marrying mortals – they are more frequently portrayed in folktales as portents of disaster at sea, sometimes even provoking it. While there are a wide variety of mermaid folktale types from all parts of the world, their representation as  harbingers of catastrophe at sea is more in line with the Sirens from Greek mythology than with folkloric otherworldly brides.

Swan Maidens

Closely related to the folktales of Selkies are the widely distributed stories about swan maidens. In his 1891 book, The Science of Fairy Tales, the folklorist Edwin Sidney Hartland devoted two chapters to discussing the global tales involving this motif. He recounts a typical tale of this type (updated from its medieval genesis to include shotguns) from Raineach, Scotland, where a young farmer travels away from his claustrophobic upbringing to seek his wealth. He soon reaches an inn and:

‘He rose early next morning, and went to a lake in the neighbourhood to have a shot. When he was approaching the lake, he saw three white swans swimming on its calm surface. He crept towards them, and with some trouble got within proper range. But when he lifted his gun to his shoulder  and was going to take aim, they became the three most beautiful maidens he had ever seen.’

After several more adventures stalking the swan maidens, he manages to steal the off-cast feathers of the youngest, and refuses to return them until she marries him. She agrees, and through her otherworldly magic, conjures up a castle for them to live in, constructed on an island within the lake. They live happily, and have children, but in time he grows homesick and is allowed to return home under the proviso that he does not mention his metaphysical existence or his swan maiden wife. But he breaks the taboo, brags about his otherworldly wife, and when he returns to find his magical castle home, there is nothing but the lake, without island, castle or swan maidens.

Lake Faeries

The folktales about lake faeries can again be found all over the globe, but there is a concentration of these types of stories in Wales, where there are over a dozen tales including many of the same motifs. Unlike the Selkies and swan maidens, the faeries are not therianthropic shape-shifters, but they are certainly otherworldly beings who are able to exist below the waters of the lakes as well as on land in the material reality of mortals. These folktales are replete with symbolism, which underlies the themes of a male human courting and marrying the (exclusively) female faerie and then losing her through the breaking of a taboo. The most detailed of these folktales is The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach (Llyn is Welsh for lake), which though only recorded in the 19th century contains named personages that appear to date the origin of the story to the 12th century.

In this tale a young farmer called Gwyn regularly frequents Llyn y Fan Fach, where he pastures his cattle. One day he sees a golden-haired woman, combing her locks and using the lake as a mirror. Immediately smitten, he offers her the bread he had brought with him, but it’s too hard for her taste and she disappears below the lake. The same happens again the next day, but this time the bread is too soft, and she once again submerges. The third day comes, and this time the bread is just right, and love is in the air. Gwyn knows what he wants: “Fair Lady of the Lake, I have no silver, no gold, no riches, just love. Please marry me and be my wife!” After some more passionate entreaties she warms up and decides to accept, but with conditions: 

“Silver and gold cannot buy me. Your love is beyond price so I will marry you and live upon Earth with you until you give to me three causeless blows. The striking of the third blow will be the breaking of our marriage contract. I will leave earth and we shall be parted for ever. Do you accept?”

Of course, he does. But first he has to deal with the faerie’s father who is ‘of wild appearance’ and magically appears with an identical twin to the lady Gwyn has fallen in love with. He tests Gwyn to choose the right faerie, which he does (discovering her name is Nelferch) and so off they go to be married with a considerable dowry of cattle, horses and other animals provided by the father, who, nevertheless reminds him once again of the ‘three blows’ condition. 

Their marriage prospered and they had three sons, but inevitably the three blows were dealt over time, all as accidents: a playful flick on the shoulder with a glove, a tap on the arm and then a third touch when Nelferch displays joy at the funeral of a neighbour’s infant. She explains that she still sees with the eyes of the Otherworld and that her joy was that the child had transcended the pain and suffering of mortality. But with the third blow struck Nelferch returns to the lake, with her dowry, and disappears below the surface. Distraught, Gwyn follows her, drowning himself in his grief. Despite the tragedy, the three sons were able to apply their half-faerie nature to positive ends and became great healers known as ‘The Physicians of Myddfai’.

Interpreting the Stories of Otherworldly Brides

These folktales contain a myriad of meanings, some hidden deeper than others. They are open to multiple interpretations, of which a few are:

The females are Pagan deities. They represent diminished ancient goddesses or spirits – Celtic deities dwelling in sacred bodies of water, and requiring some type of sacrifice as propitiation, which has become transformed over time as the interaction with mortals in the folktales. This would require the geneses of the stories to be prehistoric, passed on over millennia through an oral tradition.

A Warning about Desiring Otherworldly things. In all the stories the protagonist desires something that should be beyond the reach of mortals. However cunning or charming he is, his mortality eventually fails him and he is either outfoxed or he breaks a taboo leading to disappointment at best, and tragedy at worst. This may even find confluence with the Jungian psychoanalytical idea of water as a symbol of the subconscious. What arises out of it represents our deep-set desires, but the subconscious is an ‘Otherworld’ and what emerges from it cannot stay in waking reality, and at some point must return ‘beneath the water’.

The Therianthropes Represent Transcendence. The otherworldly entities exist in two forms – human females and spiritual beings, the latter represented by an animal or a faerie connected to water. Although the human versions can spend some time on Earth, living a conventional life, this is always fleeting and eventually their material presence will disappear as they transcend to an Otherworld. They are in effect metaphysical human souls that must at some point be released. This might be extended to seeing the therianthropes/faeries as a shamanic residue, where the animals or supernatural beings symbolise transcendent spirit guides connecting this world and a supernal universe. While this would involve a millennia-deep folk memory, there is much evidence from studies of the medieval and Early-Modern witch cults that a form of prehistoric shamanism continued under the radar in Christian Europe, with spirit animals, zoomorphism and faerie familiars as key components of the belief system. 

Love and Marriage is a Faustian Pact. More prosaically (and cynically), the folktales may be suggesting that love and marriage are agreements between two people, and that the terms need to be upheld, otherwise disaster will ensue – it is a Faustian pact. The underlying tension in the stories do seem to imply the fragile nature of love; always undone by carelessness or the breaking of agreed-upon codes.

But as is so often the case with traditional folktales we will never be able to unravel completely the deeply entrenched meanings, which have evolved through people telling them over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Stories using the otherworldly bride motifs evidently contain some specific and distinct significance as they attempt to convey fundamental ideas about the human condition as well as passing on an ancestral memory of previous cultures. However, the reason they have been so persistent and successful in doing this, is because at root they are extremely entertaining folktales that are able to grip the imagination, using the most potent of all human emotions as a trope: Love.

References

Briggs, K. 1976. An Encyclopaedia of Fairies. Pantheon Books, New York

Bruford, A. 1974. ‘The Grey Selkie’, Scottish Studies 18 (63–81)

Collinson, B. 2012. Jungian Therapy and the Meaning of Dreams: Water. Available at: https://www.briancollinson.ca/index.php/2012/11/jungian-therapy-the-meaning-of-dreams-5-water.html 

Evans, Z.T. 2017. Folklore of the Welsh Lakes: Reflecting on Faerie Brides, Drowned Towns and the Otherworld. Available at: https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/folklore-welsh-lakes-reflecting-faerie-brides-drowned-towns-otherworld/ 

Evans, Z.T. 2017. Folklore of the Welsh Lakes: The Legend and the Legacy of the Lady of Llyn Y Fan Fach. Available at: https://folklorethursday.com/regional-folklore/folklore-welsh-lakes-legend-legacy-lady-llyn-y-fan-fach/#sthash.eaGh0p88.dpbs 

Gilchrist, A.G. 1921. ‘Extra Note on Song No. 48, verse 7’, Journal of the Folk-Song Society. 6 (263–266)

Hartland, E.S. 1891. The Science of Fairy Tales. Scribner and Welford, New York. Available at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sft/index.htm 

Leavy, B.F. 1994. In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender. New York University Press. Available at: https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-89312/page/n3/mode/1up

Rushton, N. 2025. Mermaid Imagery in British and Irish medieval Churches. Available at: https://deadbutdreaming.wordpress.com/2025/01/17/mermaid-imagery-in-british-and-irish-medieval-churches/

Rushton, N. 2017. Faerie Familiars and Zoomorphic Witches. Available at: https://deadbutdreaming.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/faerie-familiars-zoomorphic-witches/ 

Wilby, E. 2005. Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Sussex Academic Press

Williamson, D. 1992. Tales of the Seal People: Scottish Folk Tales. Interlink Books, New York

Winters, R. 2016. Legends of the Selkies: Hidden Gems of Sea Mythology. Available at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/legends-selkies-hidden-germs-sea-mythology-006409 

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The cover image is a statue of the selkie Kópakonan in Mikladalur, Faroe.

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Dead but Dreaming the novel is available now…

Mermaid Imagery in British and Irish Medieval Churches

A version of this article appeared originally in the online magazine Ancient Origins.

There are numerous stone sculptures and wood carvings in European medieval churches that depict what may appear to be non-Christian imagery. Most discussed are those of the Green Man and the Sheela na gig, which have found various interpretations, from pagan symbols existing surreptitiously within Christian sacred spaces, to simple decorative adornments, created by masons and carpenters with the implicit approval of the Church. Unlike many of the more straightforward carved images of animals and therianthropes in churches, the Green Man and Sheela na gig portrayals are not drawn from passages in biblical texts, strengthening the hypothesis that they are derived from naturalistic pagan belief systems and folkloric ideas, which continued to operate at some level below the radar of Christian orthodoxy throughout the Middle Ages. It appears as if there were a certain ecclesiastical allowance to tolerate these coded populist images, even if they were evoking (especially in the case of the sexually explicit Sheela na gigs) a potentially heretical cosmology. But there is another popular non-Biblical image regularly found in churches of all status, especially prevalent in Britain and Ireland: mermaids. They can be found in stone reliefs, bench-ends, misericords, roof bosses, and occasionally in wallpaintings in almost a hundred medieval churches, usually prominent, sometimes hidden but most often following a similar design, which remained largely unchanged between the 11th and 15th centuries. Why would an ancient, folkloric, but non-Biblical, character such as the mermaid find its way into so many medieval churches? And can such mermaid imagery and symbology be correlated with the more overt pagan symbols of the Green Man and Sheela na gig?

Mermaids in Mythology and Folklore

Mermaids have been a part of the global mythological ontology for thousands of years. They make their first literary appearance in Assyria in c.1000 BCE, when the goddess Atargatis turns herself into a mermaid as a self-imposed punishment after accidentally killing her human lover. But this rendering of a mermaid creature may be based on the even earlier tradition of the Babylonian God Ea, who was portrayed as a fish with a human head. This idea of a half human, half fish creature continued to pervade mythological story cycles from this time, finding their way into Greek and Roman cosmologies and then into north-west European traditions. They were often the harbingers, and sometimes the cause, of disasters at sea, but there is also a tradition of mermaids being lured onto land to become the wives of men who have tricked them into such a relation, stories that usually end badly for the enticing male.

By the time the concept of the mermaid reached Britain and Ireland at the end of the first millennium, it had made the subtle transition from mythology to folklore; the mermaids were no longer deities to be revered but were supernatural aspects of the material world, to be feared and propitiated in equal measure. Most British and Irish folklore about mermaids (usually termed merrows) included motifs that included both warnings to seafarers and cautionary tales about desiring metaphysical beings. In the Faroe Isles the mermaid morphed into a creature known as the kelpie, half seal, half human, who could be captured by any amorous male when she beached and shed her seal skin. The most famous story is of Kópakonan (‘seal woman’) who was lured onto land to marry a fisherman, only for him to abuse her and her kelpie family, resulting in disaster for the inhabitants of Faroe. This theme of mermaids (and their analogues) as creatures of retribution became a mainstay of folklore – they were desirable and supernally beautiful, but they were also dangerous, and contact with them led (almost invariably) to calamity. 

Examples of Mermaids in Medieval Churches

Images of mermaids abound in British and Irish medieval churches. There are a range of stylistic types, from the Romanesque stone relief at the chapel of Durham Castle (dated to 1078 and thought to be the earliest depiction of a mermaid in an ecclesiastical context) through to the late medieval carved bench ends in churches such as at All Saints church, Upper Sheringham (Norfolk), St Mary’s church, Ivinghoe (Buckinghamshire) and Holy Trinity church, Great Hockham (Norfolk).

Mermaid on a column capital at the chapel of Durham Castle, c. 1078 (Howarth Litchfield)
15th-century mermaid bench-end at Holy Trinity church, Great Hockham, Norfolk (John Vigar)

There are also a small number of mermaids shown in wallpaintings, such as at St Botolph’s church, Slapton (Northamptonshire). But despite the stylistic changes through the course of the Middle Ages the mermaids are always portrayed as distinctive characters, with fish tails (usually double-tails), naked upper human bodies, and with long flowing hair.

Late medieval mermaid shown in a wallpainting at St Botolph’s church, Slapton, Northamptonshire (John Vigar)

There are a few depictions of mermen (the male equivalent of mermaids), as at St Buryan church in Cornwall, but the vast majority are of the female form. Those carved on the underside of misericords in church choirs, such as at St Mary’s church in Edlesborough (Buckinghamshire), would have been largely unseen by the majority of people frequenting the church, but most of the sculptures, carvings and wallpaintings are in prominent positions, in full view of the congregations, such as at St. Brendan’s Cathedral at Clonfert, Co. Galway, Ireland, where the image of a foot-high mermaid is located at eye level on a soffit facing the nave from a pier of the chancel, and would have appeared directly to the left of a priest as he addressed the congregation.

15th-century stone relief mermaid, knotwork and angels at St. Brendan’s Cathedral, Clonfert, Co. Galway, Ireland (Neil Rushton)

The stone sculpted mermaid at All Saints church in Thornham, Norfolk, is also a prominent feature in the nave and must have been located there by design, in order to convey a message to the (mostly illiterate) congregation. Indeed, most stone reliefs of mermaids are found in the communal areas of medieval churches, intrinsic parts of the experience of attending church for generations of medieval people. Even more common were bench-end mermaids, wooden carvings that would have been both visible and touchable to everyone attending the church. These are exclusively late medieval in date, making it clear that the mermaid had continued as a defined symbol through to the Reformation.

One of the best known representations of a mermaid from a medieval church is at St Senara’s church, Zennor in Cornwall. Carved into the side of a bench-chair in the 15th century, it depicts a typical mermaid figure, naked to her fish tail, and holding aloft a mirror and comb. The image seems to relate to a piece of local folklore, where a mermaid, in the form of a woman, came to church each Sunday and charmed the parishioners with her beautiful singing before returning to the sea. A local man called Mathey Trewella was enticed to return with her to the sea one day, and neither was seen again. Although not recorded in literary form until 1873 by the folklorist William Bottrell, this folktale had evidently been doing the rounds as an oral tradition long before. Although it is possible that it was the bench-end carving that gave rise to the story, it is equally likely that the medieval image of the mermaid was commemorating a folktale in circulation in the 15th century. This is unusual; mermaid images in churches do not normally come packaged with an associated folktale. They were more likely timeless symbols, which despite their pagan connotations, were allowed to be displayed in churches by the ecclesiastical authorities as a didactic tool; visual symbols to persuade the faithful towards virtue.

15th-century bench-chair mermaid at St Senara’s church, Zennor, Cornwall (John Vigar)

The Symbology of Mermaids in Medieval Churches

One interpretation of the symbolic meaning of church mermaids is that they were warnings against the sin of lust, possibly in the same way as the Sheela na gig sculptures. The mermaids were portrayed as young women with flowing hair, whose folkloric attributes were often those of temptation – they were designed with negative connotations. Patricia Radford describes how this was offset at St Brendan’s Cathedral, Clonfert:

‘Directly above the mermaid at Clonfert, and at many other locations including Clontuskert, is a beautifully carved, symmetrical knot. Knot-work in Irish and Celtic art has protective associations, so it seems the purpose of this motif is to protect the viewer from the mermaid’s dangerous pull since merely gazing upon the creature might incite lust. At Clonfert, on the pier opposite the mermaid, at the priest’s right, are three carved angels. It is typical of Irish churches that images associated with good are placed so that they can be seen to balance the potential evil of images of warning, such as mermaids. It is the nature of medieval art that an image may have multiple layers of meaning.’

This insightful observation may have been true at some Irish churches, but most British church mermaids exist in isolation, without any potentially protective symbols or angels. However, the majority of these British mermaids are portrayed with symbols that would have been understood as displaying attributes of the sins of pride and vanity – as per the Zennor carving, the mermaids often held combs and mirrors. Not only were the mermaids sexual temptresses, they were made explicit in their vanity. This may have allowed for a dual meaning in their symbology, where the mermaids known tendency to draw men to their destruction was coupled with a warning to women to guard against excessive vanity. The depiction of the mermaids with long flowing hair also fed into this; medieval women of good virtue were expected to wear their hair ‘tamed’ and concealed beneath a covering – loose hair was for pre-pubescent girls and virtueless women. It might be wondered whether such portrayals of alluring femininity in churches may have had the opposite effect of that intended, but it seems as if the ecclesiastical authorities were able to use effectively the symbology of the mermaid, known for destruction and misfortune, to inculcate Christian virtues. It is unlikely that mermaid iconography would have been so regularly displayed in such prominent positions in churches if this were not the case.

In this respect mermaid imagery in medieval churches differs from that of the Green Man and the Sheela na gig images, despite all having pagan connotations. They served different purposes. Green Men and Sheela na gigs were, and remain, amorphous in their symbolic meaning. They represent liminal aspects of medieval belief systems, that were likely interpreted by medieval congregations (as well as modern commentators) as unexplained aspects of a subversive cosmology, allowed into ecclesiastical precincts through custom and convention, almost as a propitiation to underlying non-Christian phenomenology. Their liminal nature meant they rarely found significant locations in churches, but were rather subsumed in vaults and side-chapels, tolerated but not generally exposed to general view. In contrast, mermaid sculptures and carvings were usually in full prospect, allowed into the nave and communal areas, often within touching distance of the congregation. It is likely that people were well aware of the folkloric properties of the mermaids, and the Church was able to appropriate this knowledge to expound core Christian values in a dynamically visual way. But at the same time, the mermaids were skilfully rendered works of art, which may not always have served a symbolic purpose. The medieval churchgoers who would have viewed such accomplished carpentry and stonework throughout their lives may, like their modern counterparts, have simply enjoyed the mermaid imagery as something that enhanced the church space, while invoking a supernatural being and the stories that accumulated around it.

References

Alexander, S. 2012. Mermaids: The Myths, Legends and Lore. Adams Media, Avon, US

Andrews, T. 1998. Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea, and Sky. Oxford University Press

Bottrell, W. 1873. ‘The Mermaid of Zennor’, in Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall. Available at: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/swc2/swc274.htm 

Briggs, K. 1976. An Encyclopaedia of Fairies. Pantheon Books, New York 

Kemble, M.J. 1992. ‘Mermaids in Folk Literature’, in Ichioka, C.S. (ed.), Stories from around the World: An Annotated Bibliography of Folk Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa, 67–82 

Platt, C. 1995, The Parish Churches of Medieval England. Chancellor Press, London

Radford, P. 2003. Lusty Ladies: Mermaids in the Medieval Irish Church. Available at: http://homepage.eircom.net/~archaeology/three/mermaid.htm 

Rushton, N. 2019. Selkies, Sirens, Swan Maidens and Otherworldly Brides. Available at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/selkies-sirens-swan-0011483 

Weir, A., 2017. Satan in the Groin: Exhibitionist Figures on Mediæval Churches. Available at: http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/ 

Wingren, W. 2017. Why Are There Carvings of Women Flashing Their Genitals on Churches Across Europe? Available at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/why-are-there-carvings-women-flashing-their-genitals-churches-across-021737 

Winters, R. 2015. Unraveling the Nature and Identity of the Green Man. Available at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/unraveling-nature-and-identity-green-man-002620 

Winters, R. 2015. Unraveling the Nature and Identity of the Green Man, part 2. Available at: https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/unraveling-nature-green-man-part-2-how-pre-christian-icon-020186 

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Thanks to my friend and church historian John Vigar for all the images, apart from the Durham Castle Chapel mermaid, which comes from a conservation assessment of the chapel by Howarth Litchfield. The cover image (by John Vigar) is a 15th-century mermaid bench-end at All Saints church, Upper Sheringham, Norfolk.

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Dead but Dreaming the novel is available now

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