Parch Marks (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781915983572)

Britain, 2056. Drought has left a trail of inexplicable parch marks around the long-dry riverbed of an ancient massacre site. Will TV archaeologist Eva Sinclair, struggling to evade violence in a future York riven by political tension and protest, discover what links these fern-like patterns have with a Bronze Age community that also once faced the ravages of climate change?

Eva Sinclair is struggling after an extramarital affair leaves her broke and dealing with a festering media scandal. She jumps at the chance to head to York to join an excavation of a unique Bronze Age site in the seceded North of England. Of particular interest are the highly atypical and mysterious parch marks in the shape of coiling ferns that lie alongside a harrowing, ancient mass grave. Eva is fascinated, but with protests becoming ever more violent in the wake of drought and water rationing, she finds loyalty to her colleagues conflicting with personal ambition.

1,300 BC. Ray is known in her village to have the Sense - the ability to feel the presence of the Serpent of the River, the Woman of the Spring, the Boar and all the other spirits that allow her and her community to survive and thrive. Plummeting temperatures and a series of failed harvests, however, have left them flailing. When a powerful tribe from the south arrives to seek hospitality and the healing powers of the Spring, Ray is left feeling she would be better off blessed with the ability to control the more emotionally incontinent members of her clan.

Author: Anna Orridge
ISBN-10: 1915983576
ISBN-13: 9781915983572
Publisher: Goldsmiths Press
Language: English
Published: 09/01/2026
Pages: 276
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs