GAME OF SORROWS, A by S.G. MacLean
S.G. MacLean . Unknown Year . English
Second historical thriller in the Alexander Seaton series sweeps the hero back to his roots in Ulster, and a family living under a curse and riven with long-held secrets Aberdeen, 1628. Alexander Seaton's happily settled life as a university teacher is shattered by the arrival in town of a stranger who looks like his twin and who carries a plea for help from Alexander's dead mother's family in Ireland. The family has been placed under a poet's curse, threatening death to various members. Elements of the curse have already begun to play out. Reluctantly answering the call, Seaton travels to Ulster, to find himself among a family torn apart by secrets and deep resentments. As he seeks out the author of the curse, he becomes deeply entangled in a conflict that involves fugitive priests, displaced poets, rebellious plotters and agents of the king. Confronted by murder within his family, he finds the lines between superstition and faith, duty and loyalty are becoming increasingly blurred, while his Scottish homeland grows ever more remote.
Categories: Self-Help
About the Author
Shona (S.G.) MacLean was born in Inverness and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. She obtained an MA and PH.D. in History from Aberdeen University. She began to write fiction while bringing up her four children (and Labrador) on the Banffshire coast. She has now returned to live in the Highlands. Her first book, 'The Redemption of Alexander Seaton' was short-listed for both the Saltire first book award and the CWA Historical Dagger; she has won the Historical Dagger twice - in 2015 for 'The Seeker' and in 2019 for 'Destroying Angel'. Her standalone Jacobite thriller, 'The Bookseller of Inverness' was voted Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2023. On dealing with plot problems, characters who've gone awol and issues of setting, Shona says, "My search for a solution tends to involve the dog and a pair of wellies. Most things can be solved by a stomp through the woods or along the banks of the Conon river. The dog is much more conducive to this kind of thing than the children, although I have realised that a close reading of my books reveals the true hero of most of them to be a canine.Those dogs are, by seventeenth-century necessity, 'hounds', but I like to believe that in each of them beats the heart of a Labrador." To avoid work altogether, she suggests getting a bike. On instagram @shonamacleanauthor On Threads @shonamacleanauthor
