The Maiden: The Award-Winning, Daring, Feminist Debut Novel (Paperback) - Kate Foster

Based on the real life trial and execution of Lady Nimmo in seventeenth century Edinburgh, this is a gripping, feminist debut historical novel for fans of Stacey Halls and Sara Collins.

The Times Bestseller

'A masterpiece' - Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal

'Exceptional - a tense, thrilling investigation, with a decidedly feminist slant' - Daily Mail

Inspired by a real-life murder trial, Kate Foster's The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history. Winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award 2022 and the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year 2023.

In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess.

Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn't the only woman in Forrester's life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .

'Riveting . . . the tension persists until the last page' - The Times

About the Author

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. Her first novel, The Maiden, a feminist revisionist take on the Scottish legend of The White Lady of Corstorphine, won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect competition in 2020 and the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year in 2023. The King's Witches is her second novel. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.