The Book of Shadows (Herculine, #1)

Herculine is only six-years-old when she watches her mother die horribly and inexplicably. A child alone in the nineteenth-century French countryside, she makes her way to the secluded convent, where she is taken in as a foundling orphan and raised by nuns who teach the children of the privileged to fear a wrathful God. But shy, unworldly Herculine is not like the others in this cold, forebidding place. And when she is led down a dark path by a rebellious fellow student, she soon finds herself convicted of crimes unimaginable. But death at the hands of the ignorant and falsely pious is not to be Herculine's lot. Held captive in the convent library, she is visited by four unexpected saviors with timeless needs of their own: the incubus priest Father Louis; the tragic, damned beauty Madeleine; the demonic Asmodei; and Sebastiana d'Azur, a witch. By dawn, Herculine is free yet forever changed as she follows her liberators into a world of sensuous pleasures and great mysteries both wondrous and strange. Secreted away in Sebastiana's once-grand manor high above the Breton sands, Herculine sets out to find out why she has been "chosen" and for what purpose. Her quest - ripe with erotic discovery, dark magic, heresy, and blood - propels her headlong through the perils of the age, across borders between the living and the dead, and back through a time when hysteria and madness reigned, when noble heads were impaled and paraded through the streets of Paris. For only when her mysterious mission is completed - and the terrible, otherworldly roots of a gruesome Revolution are finally revealed - can she understand who and what she truly is. Until then, she must simply trust...and learn.

alone Among The Young Girls Taught By Nuns At A Convent School In Nineteenth-century France, Orphaned Herculine Has Neither Wealth Nor Social Connections. When She's Accused Of Being A Witch, The Shy Student Is Locked Up With No Hope Of Escape ... Until Her Rescue By A Real Witch, The Beautiful, Mysterious Sebastiana. Swept Away To The Witch's Manor, Herculine Will Enter A Fantastic, Erotic World To Discover Her True Nature — And Her Destiny — In This Breathtaking, Darkly Sensual First Novel.

kelley Armstrong

a Spellbinding Tale With A Truly Enchanting Heroine.

An enigmatic orphan raised in the convent, Herculine is spirited away from her scandalous life by otherworldly beings to a fantastical, sensual world where she discovers the secrets of her destiny in the midst of heresy and hysteria. Title from ebook title screen (viewed July 29, 2005).