In this extraordinary novel, Karen Maitland delivers a dazzlingreinterpretation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—an ingenious alchemy ofhistory, mystery, and powerful human drama.

The year is 1348.The Black Plague grips the country. In a world ruled by faith and fear,nine desperate strangers, brought together by chance, attempt to outrunthe certain death that is running inexorably toward them.

Eachmember of this motley company has a story to tell. From Camelot, therelic-seller who will become the group’s leader, to Cygnus, theone-armed storyteller . . . from the strange, silent child calledNarigorm to a painter and his pregnant wife, each has a secret. None iswhat they seem. And one among them conceals the darkest secret ofall—propelling these liars to a destiny they never saw coming.

Magical, heart-quickening, and raw, Company of Liars is a work of vaulting imagination from a powerful new voice in historical fiction.

Desperate to outrun the Black Death ravaging England during the soddensummer of 1348, nine disparate souls band together in this harrowinghistorical, which infuses a Canterbury Tales scenario with the spectral chill of an M. Night Shyamalan ghost story. Maitland (The White Room)gives each of the travelers a potentially devastating secret. How didnarrator Camelot, a glib-tongued peddler of false relics and hope,really come by that hideously scarred face? What is magician Zophielhiding inside his wagon? And just who is Narigorm, the spooky albinogirl whose readings of the runes are always eerily on target? As thenine strangers slog cross-country through the pestilential landscape,their number shrinking one by one, they come to realize that what theydon't know about each other might just kill them. Despite Maitland'syarn-spinning prowess, her narrative occasionally stalls because ofunrelenting grimness and an increasingly predictable plot-that is,until its gasp-out-loud finale.