The Binding Spell

by Marisa Linton

Chicken House The Binding Spell ABISBOOK Chicken House.

Paperback

About the author

Marisa Linton is both a Professor of History and a prize-winning novelist of supernatural speculative fiction.

In 2023 Marisa won the Times/Chicken House competition with her ‘young adult’ folk horror, The Binding Spell (Chicken House, 2025). She describes it as a mash-up of The Wicker Man and This Country; set in a remote village, where witches and druids still live in secret.

Marisa’s adult novel, Circle of Shadows (Hodderscape, 2025) is in the tradition of M.R. James and the golden age of supernatural fiction. A young woman in Edwardian Britain becomes an occult detective and fights demonic forces, both fantastical and human. The sequel, Domain of Darkness, about a curse on the historical Ghost Club and a dark master of the occult, will be published in December 2025. It was inspired, in part, by the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, and by M.R. James, ‘Casting the Runes’

Reviews

[Sherri Byrand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so enjoyed following Morgan through the twists and turns of this book, with her trying to make the best of the bad — then growing worse — situation her dad drove her and her siblings into. There’s intrigue, mayhem, suspense and some horror, but through it all there’s characters you simply want to spend time with. And it all happens in an odd, sometimes downright creepy village near the Welsh border that still offers some promise along with the problems Morgan must surmount.