The Shapeshifter's Daughter: A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel of the underworld

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Sally Magnusson Karen Traynor

The Shapeshifter's Daughter

A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel of the underworld

Sally Magnusson, Karen Traynor

$45

Hardback

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QTY:

English

John Murray Publishers Ltd
06 November 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Myth & legend told as fiction; Adult & contemporary romance

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*A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK 2025
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Nothing, on earth or below it,

freezes faster than the worthless heart.

Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, realm of the gods, by Odin the Allfather, Hel's fate as the terrible goddess of death is sealed. Half beauty, half crone, she has reigned for aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death's travellers to her ice-locked prison. Until one day a memory shifts, and she is forced to seek out the sun in Midgard, where humans have made their home.

Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Helen Firth makes the impulsive decision to return to Orkney after forty years to make peace with her past. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands: to die.

As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she believes herself to be isn't who she really is.

A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel, The Shapeshifter's Daughter celebrates the joy of reclaiming our stories.

By: Sally Magnusson
Read by: Karen Traynor
Imprint: John Murray Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 136mm, Width: 212mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 380g
ISBN: 9781399825207
ISBN 10: 1399825208
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 06 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson has written several books for adults and children, most recently her Sunday Times bestseller Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother's dementia, The Sealwoman's Gift (2018), her acclaimed debut novel, The Ninth Child (2020) and Music in the Dark (2022). Sally lives outside Glasgow.

Reviews for The Shapeshifter's Daughter: A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel of the underworld

Magnusson is superb at evoking a landscape rich in history and prehistory, although the novel's greatest strength is her feminist interpretation of Norse mythology in a story that centres equally on Hel and Helen, both of whom are daughters wounded by ""fathers whom they still, in the last winter of their own lives, struggles to forgive"". * Irish Times *