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Little Dog Books
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The Garnet Inheritance
Karen Lewis
She was the mother of Alfred the Great. History gave her one paragraph.
Set on the Isle of Wight and in 9th-century Winchester, The Garnet Inheritance follows three generations of a Jutish family as their culture is absorbed by the rising Saxon kingdom. At its centre is Osburh: barred by law from the title of queen, her ancestry hidden from the court that will define her life.
She will build her marriage from a single provisional decision made beside a dying fire. She will teach her youngest son, small, sickly, overlooked, that power does not always wear a crown. That son is Alfred.
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Little Dog Books publishes literary fiction about ordinary people doing their best. Whether the setting is 9th-century Wessex or West Virginia now, people are recognisably us: flawed, coping, occasionally rising to something.
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