I’m hugely excited to welcome Australian author, Kell Woods, to the agency with her debut novel Gingerstruck. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m a massive fan of myths and fairytales. I adored Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and the Spindle and have read every single Juliet Marillier. I was also the UK editor for Naomi Novik’s Uprooted.

So you can imagine my delight when Kell’s submission dropped into my email, pitching itself as a story inspired by Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and Snow White and Rose Red. It’s not often that I’ll drop everything to read a submission, but this hooked me after the first three chapters and I absolutely devoured the rest.

When witchery and danger return to the woods, Greta must face the secrets of her past - and of her own nature - to save everything she cares about.

Almost twenty years have passed since Greta and her brother Hans escaped the old woman’s cottage in the Black forest, but there was no living happily ever after for them. The war has taken its toll on these lands, husbands and sons lost, a country impoverished. When the local Baron dies, his cruel, young and beautiful wife raises taxes and a Blood Tithe, ensuring that those who can’t pay off their debts, pay through servitude.

Wolves are gathering around the village and a group of mercenaries stalk the streets. A black bear has been sighted in the forest, but an encounter with it leaves Greta puzzled by its gentle and peaceful demeanour. Then there are the deaths; bodies have been found in the woods, their blood taken, their hearts removed.

As the villagers become more desperate, whispers of witchcraft abound. With Hans’ gambling debts forcing him to take the Blood Tithe, only the addictively-delicious gingerbread Greta makes - created with the help of a book stolen when they escaped their childhood captor – can offer a way out. But there’s a price to pay for using this blood skill, Tattermagic…and it could cost Greta everything, unless she can find another way to beat the horrors from her past and find a new path through the darkness…

Set in the Black Forest of Wurttemberg during the mid-17th Century, Gingerstruck is a stunning meld of love-story, fairy-tale, magic and history which is sure to appeal to fans of Naomi Novik and Kate Forsyth.

Kell has explained a little about what inspired her to write this book: ‘I'm fascinated by fairy tales - their beauty and their darkness - but I'm also intrigued by their sparseness. Their gaps, and omissions. A man turns into a beast and back again with impossible ease. Another abandons his children in the woods at the whim of his new wife. His children are left to fend for themselves in the wild for days. They are kidnapped, locked up, terrorised. One of the children pushes an old woman into her own oven, killing her. What would have happened if these characters were real people? How would they have endured such darkness and pain? I wanted to cut open the familiar tales we read as children, turn them inside out, and expose the red lining.’

About the author: Kell Woods has a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English Literature and Creative Writing from Macquarie University in Sydney, and is now a librarian at a busy regional public library. She regularly attends writing workshops with the Australian Writers Centre and Writing NSW. In 2014 she attended the History, Mystery & Magic writing retreat in the Cotswolds with Kate Forsyth, then won a mentorship with her through the Australian Society of Authors Emerging Writers & Illustrators Mentorship Program. She lives in NSW, Australia and Gingerstruck is her first novel.