Book Talk @ St Mary’s – Phil Rickman – The Fever of the World

Saturday 15th April 2023 – 6pm. The Fever of the World

St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye

Join Phil Rickman for a talk about The Fever of the World, the latest Merrily Watkins novel. Book 16 in the Merrily Watkins series – now a critically acclaimed ITV drama starring Anna Maxwell-Martin.

Merrily Watkins is Deliverance Consultant or Advisor on the Paranormal for the Diocese of Hereford. Or Exorcist, as it used to be known. It’s a real job; there’s at least one in every diocese in the UK. They work with psychiatrists, social workers and the police. And their own beliefs are often tested. There are few certainties. The borderline between psychology and the unexplained is often laid out in barbed wire.

Welcome to the River Wye: a place of poetry, historic obsession… and occult murder.

The curious death of an estate agent is being investigated by detective David Vaynor who, before joining the police, studied the famous 18th century poet William Wordsworth. As Vaynor is discovering, the dark paganism that changed Wordsworth’s life still lingers on the banks of the River Wye today – and there are some killings even the police can’t approach…

Enter Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum, and diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Called away from her local hauntings, Merrily finds herself confronting the riverside ghosts who, as Wordsworth puts it, ‘promote ill purposes and flatter foul desires’. In the ancient heart of the Wye Valley, a buried grudge is about to come to light.

A joint event organised by and benefitting The Friends of St Mary’s Ross on Wye and Rossiter Books. £3 off the price of the book if you buy a signed copy on the evening.