The Golden Key

Praise

“Spiritualism, the suffragette movement, and the fairy tales of Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald combine with the author’s lyrical writing style to convey an elegant sense of mystery and otherworldliness. This gothic fantasy will captive fans of historical fiction.”
—Booklist

“Amid the phantasmagorical developments of Marian Womack’s The Golden Key, which include spiritualism, changelings, and cracked doors between worlds, a parable against privilege arises.” 
—Foreword Reviews

“Steeped in a slew of influences, The Golden Key bends genres . . . It’s part Shirley Jackson’s stories of inner demons, part Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . . . part Astrid Lindgren’s faith in children’s resilience and part ghost story . . . Enter a mysterious world in the hands of capable women. Getting drawn into this story is easy; getting out again is trickier.”
—BookPage

“With hints of the brooding Gothic of Rawblood and Rebecca, this wonderfully creepy historical novel makes it absolutely clear that Marian Womack is a rising star.”
—Tim Major, author of Snakeskins

“An intriguing and unsettling tale of séances, strange lights, disappearing children and a poacher who swears he has seen the devil in the marshes . . . Womack brings a great sense of the uncanny to the Fens.”
—Alison Littlewood, author of A Cold Season

“ . . . ultimately a very literary kind of historical mystery, reminiscent in places of works like Jeanette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sky and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula.”
—Tor.com

“Discover a brooding and eerie gothic tale of a wonderland filled with something other than wonder, and a fairyland that is dark and dangerous.”
—New York Journal of Books