Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Crown of Lights
    Unavailable
    A Crown of Lights
    Unavailable
    A Crown of Lights
    Ebook601 pages7 hours

    A Crown of Lights

    By Phil Rickman

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Single mother and Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins must keep the peace in rural Hereford, quelling a modern witch hunt, and a killer with an old tradition to guard...

    Ancient history, violent deaths, feuds, intrigues and murder. A most original sleuth. - The Times

    When a pagan couple buy a ruined church on the Welsh Border, there's an extreme reaction from the local fundamentalist priest. Is it a hate campaign or a nightmarish modern witch-hunt? Merrily Watkins is sent in to keep the lid on the cauldron and uncovers the sinister dynamics of the isolated village of Old Hindwell.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCorvus
    Release dateAug 1, 2011
    ISBN9780857890184
    Unavailable
    A Crown of Lights
    Author

    Phil Rickman

    PHIL RICKMAN lives on the Welsh border where he writes and presents the book programme Phil the Shelf on BBC Radio Wales. He is the hugely popular author of The Bones of Avalon, The Heresy of Dr Dee and the Merrily Watkins Mysteries.

    Read more from Phil Rickman

    Related to A Crown of Lights

    Related ebooks

    Ghosts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Collectors’ Hoard

      Aug 26, 2021

      Collectors’ Hoard
      3 min read

    • Article

      Home to ROOST

      Jan 11, 2022

      Home to ROOST
      11 min read

    • Article

      Curios and Curiouser

      Jun 5, 2022

      Curios and Curiouser
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lyrical Landscapes

      Apr 8, 2022

      Lyrical Landscapes
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fresh Directions

      Sep 2, 2021

      Fresh Directions
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Spectre Of The Past

      Jan 25, 2024

      The Spectre Of The Past
      6 min read

    • Article

      Confessions Of A Boggart Hunter

      Feb 24, 2022

      Seven or eight years ago I started to read compulsively about an English folk monster, the boggart. Studies, writing, articles and surveys followed. I launched my Boggart Census in 2019 in Fortean Times (more of which below) and there are now two boo

      14 min read

    • Article

      Confessions Of A Boggart Hunter

      Feb 24, 2022

      Seven or eight years ago I started to read compulsively about an English folk monster, the boggart. Studies, writing, articles and surveys followed. I launched my Boggart Census in 2019 in Fortean Times (more of which below) and there are now two boo

      14 min read

    • Article

      Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels

      Feb 3, 2022

      The paradox of imagined apocalypses is that they’re always more about the present than the future. Here's a list of a few haunting and evocative titles. The post Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Jan 5, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Oct 12, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Nov 15, 2023

      SIR: Among the things that Giles Wood is so pleased to have avoided, by turning down an invitation to stay for a week on a Scottish island (October issue), is the prospect of chatting through three-course dinners every night. As his putative (and ers

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 19, 2020

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 20, 2023

      Alan Murdie’s article “Spirits of Glencoe” [FT428:18-21] describes the infamous massacre, along with latterday commemorations of the event, and the general atmosphere of foreboding that seems to pervade the Glen and surrounding area. Glen Coe is an a

      15 min read

    • Article

      Gothic Whitby

      Oct 21, 2021

      Gothic Whitby
      6 min read

    • Article

      Vampire’slair

      Aug 31, 2021

      Vampire’slair
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Sep 9, 2021

      With regard to Nick Guitard’s letter pooh-poohing the possible existence of tiny aliens [FT405:71], I would like to make the following observations. David Bowie, may he rock on, once said that the Internet is like an alien being has landed and that w

      17 min read

    • Article

      Paranormal Cold Case Investigating History’s Most Spine-chilling Encounters

      Jul 7, 2022

      Scott is nervous. The last time he told this story was in his late teens. Halfway through, his friend told him he should go to the bathroom. “Why?” Scott asked. The friend pointed out Scott was bleeding. “I had been so nervous telling the story, that

      2 min read

    • Article

      Paranormal Cold Case Investigating History’s Most Spine-chilling Encounters

      Jul 7, 2022

      Scott is nervous. The last time he told this story was in his late teens. Halfway through, his friend told him he should go to the bathroom. “Why?” Scott asked. The friend pointed out Scott was bleeding. “I had been so nervous telling the story, that

      2 min read

    • Article

      Patrick McCabe: ‘You Can Walk Into Some Irish Bars And Be In A Different Dimension’

      Apr 24, 2022

      At one o’clock on a Thursday lunchtime there’s not a seat to be had in the Canal Bar at the Creighton Hotel in Clones, up near the border in the midlands of Ireland. Regular couples and groups of old friends have got here early for the blackboarded s

      5 min read

    • Article

      A World Apart

      Mar 21, 2017

      A World Apart
      10 min read

    • Article

      Magnets: Carried through time, lovers seek their purpose.

      Feb 6, 2014

      Moon Colony B, 2213 Former Ponzi-schemer Mary Pillar digs through a trashcan. It smells like rotten eggs and milk. She is elderly and homeless, living in an alley between two eco-efficient skyscrapers. Dust particles dance around her. She has lost ev

      11 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken

      Feb 4, 2019

      What she wanted was a kind of greatness that women were not allowed. The post ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 20, 2023

      Books
      18 min read

    • Article

      Unreality Television

      May 27, 2020

      Unreality Television
      4 min read

    • Article

      Island Life

      Apr 22, 2020

      Island Life
      3 min read

    Reviews for A Crown of Lights

    3.5/5

    6 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Phil Rickman's books about the Reverend Merrily Watkins are impossible to categorize and to place in a specific genre. They are so unique that they should have their own genre. His writing is mesmerizing, and the books almost impossible to put down once begun. Each book in the series is a perfect gem - a wonderful mystery, great characters, more than a taste of the supernatural, and gripping plots. This book puts Merrily and her daughter Jane in the middle of a maestrom that is fueled by an evangelist priest and a powerful wiccan. It all takes place in a tiny little village right on the Welsh border where secrets have been kept for so long, they actually become part of the atmosphere. The book held me enthralled right until the very end. I can't say enough about this wonderful and provocative series.
    • 3/5
      Hereford Diocese exorcist Rev.Merrily Watkins is dispatched to cool things down when a Revivalist Minister starts inciting hatred of a young pagan couple that have bought an ex church. She finds that the locals are concealing plenty of nasty secrets
    • 3/5
      Betty and Robin Thorogood are two pagans who have bought a de-comissioned church. Merrily Watkins is the local exorcist and a local vicar. There's rumours of some unorthodox activities by the rector in the same dioceses. The bishop asks Merrily to go on TV to talk in a trash-chat-show, because she's the only available person who is suitable for the job. There's also some issues about the history of the churches in the area and rumours of a Dragon.All making it sound like my kind of book. Indeed it was for a while until it fell into the trap of painting Pagans as all being delusional, with the subtext of the "Pagan Conspiracy" to bring evil back that one of the teenagers finds out about. Gah. The book left with with a bit of a bad taste and although it had great potential it failed to impress.
    • 4/5
      Although this book moved a bit slower than I would like from time to time, it's still an excellent blend of characterization, plot, and atmosphere. I would imagine many people who pick up one of Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels might put it right back on the shelf when they read words like "supernatural," "exorcist," or "horror." To each his own, but I would love to suggest to these folks that they might want to give his books a try. The connotations that swirl around the words that I mentioned have more to do with the passage of centuries and the shifting focus of human belief systems. Rickman's books have everything to do with buried secrets that have been allowed to fester and taint those who would hide this information than they have to do with specters and things that go bump in the night. His plots are built solidly upon the rock of human frailty, and the hints of the supernatural serve as wisps of fog touching the corners of your vision and making the hairs on the back of your neck rise. The friction between Christianity and paganism was extremely well done here, and I had no clue what was really going on until the reveal.A good solid story with the tantalizing taste of the otherworldly only works when guided by a strong cast of characters. Merrily Watkins is priest, exorcist, mother-- a smart, brave, and compassionate woman committed to doing what's right and good for people-- oftentimes against the advice of church hierarchy. (Merrily believes in helping people regardless of their church affiliation-- or lack thereof.) She calls her teenage daughter "flower" and although Jane is the usual prickly moodswinging adolescent with more than a passing interest in the occult, she's basically a good kid who loves her mother. In fact Jane and her boyfriend of the moment Eirion (Jane always thinks of him as "Irene") not only supply some of the thrills and chills in A Crown of Lights, they add some of the humor that's needed to leaven a rather dark tale.My interest in the supernatural is superficial at best, and if that's all Phil Rickman's books had to offer, I wouldn't read them. Everything he writes is rooted firmly in humanity-- our mistakes that frighten and shame us, and the lengths to which we will go to hide and protect those mistakes-- and in the history and immeasurable passage of time in this area of the Welsh borders. Several times in reading A Crown of Lights, I was reminded of an evening when my husband and I were driving through the English countryside and the tower of an ancient church loomed suddenly above me out of the dark and the fog. Phil Rickman is a master of character, of blending history and belief, and of atmosphere. Whenever I read a Merrily Watkins book and feel "a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone," I smile.
    • 3/5
      The third Merrily Watkins book. This time we see a mixture of evangelism and paganism. For some reason I always struggle with this book. The pagan couple Robin and Betty seem too bland whilst fundamentalist priest Nick Ellis comes across as unhinged to me. Aside from Merrily and co, you don't really have sympathy for the characters and therefore I'm never that bothered about the outcome.
    • 3/5
      Part of a solid series with an interesting setting and sympathetic continuing characters. This episode, though, is not the best--too many plot elements, none of them compelling, no strong focus. Least "occult" of the series I've read.

      1 person found this helpful