The Quarry: The Druid Chronicles, Book Four

by A.M. Linden

Set in early medieval Britain and perfect for Lord of the Rings fans, this fourth installment of The Druid Chronicles tells the story of a Saxon sheriff who’s on the hunt for fugitive Druids—unaware that he is being pursued as well.

Obedient to the dictates of their chief priestess, a small band of goddess-worshipping Britons leave the shelter offered them by a loyal innkeeper for a desolate mountain valley believed to be the site of their cult’s ancestral home. Rebuilding stone walls reduced to rubble over centuries of abandonment would have taken years for a legion of skilled masons; the five Druid priests and priestesses have only one skilled laborer with them and only a matter of months before winter sets in.

Time is equally pressing for a pair of Christian Saxon lovers, neither of whom is motivated by any higher cause than their compelling need to finish what they’ve traveled from the capital city of Atheldom to the remote shire of Codswallow to kill the woman’s husband before he finds out that she is pregnant.

Although the two situations are unrelated by anything other than their proximity to one another, the moment when Caelym, high priest of the shrine of the Great Mother Goddess, will be caught in the crossfire between Stefan, sheriff of Codswallow, and the forces his estranged wife has gathered against him, is rapidly approaching.

368 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2025

About the author

Ann Margaret Linden was born in Seattle, Washington but grew up on the east coast, returning to the Pacific Northwest as a young adult. She has undergraduate degrees in anthropology and in nursing and a master’s degree as a nurse practitioner. After working in a variety of acute care and community health settings, she took a position in a program for children with special health care needs where her responsibilities included writing clinical reports, parent educational materials, provider newsletters, grant submissions and other program related materials. In a somewhat whimsical decision to write something for fun, she began what was to be tongue-in-cheek historical murder mystery involving Druids and early medieval Christians. It wasn’t meant to be long or involved, but the characters kept getting into trouble and she had to keep writing to find out what happened to them. After a lengthy journey of her own that included taking adult education creative writing courses, researching early British history, and traveling to England, Scotland, and Wales, the first book of The Druid Chronicles, a five volume quasi-historical fiction series, is scheduled for publication by She Writes Press in June 2021.