The Needle in the Blood – Sarah Bower

Condition : Good.
Snowbooks, 2007, Medium-format paperback – Historical Fiction – 575pp.

January 1067. Charismatic bishop Odo of Bayeux decides to commission a wall hanging, on a scale never seen before, to celebrate his role in the conquest of Britain by his brother, William, Duke of Normandy. What he cannot anticipate is how utterly this will change his life – even more than the invasion itself.

His life becomes entangled with the women who embroider his hanging, especially Gytha – handmaiden to the fallen Saxon queen and his sworn enemy. But against their intentions they fall helplessly in love; in doing so Odo comes into conflict with his king and his God and Gytha with Odo’s enemies, who mistrust her hold over such a powerful man.
Friends become enemies, enemies become lovers, and nothing in life–or the tapestry–is what it seems. An unlikely love story born of passion and intensity, crafted by critically acclaimed historical novelist Sarah Bower, The Needle in the Blood is a “story of love, war, and the tangled truth of England’s birth.

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