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

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

John Murray
11 November 2025

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

Nothing, on earth or below it, in the skies or under the seas, freezes faster than the worthless heart.

Before she was a hideous monster, the Queen of the Underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a young girl from lofty Asgard, the 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 centuries over the starless darkness of Niflheim, welcoming the most pitiful amongst death's travellers to her icy 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 and ultimately die. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has chosen to return to the island.

As Helen nears ever closer to death, and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn finds herself drawn to Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn - that perhaps who she thinks she is isn't who she's really meant to be...

By: Sally Magnusson
Read by: Karen Traynor
Imprint: John Murray
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 273g
ISBN: 9781399825214
ISBN 10: 1399825216
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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 *