Sally Magnusson
The Shapeshifter’s Daughter

Thursday 18 June, 7.00pm
Rayleigh Library, 132/4 High Street, Rayleigh, SS6 7BX

Celebrate the joy of reclaiming our stories with best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson. The Shapeshifter’s Daughter is a spellbinding feminist retelling of the Norse myth of Hel, the Goddess of the Underworld, set in the magical landscape of Orkney.

Tickets: £10 / £8 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

Event Information

💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the night.
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.

Sally Magnusson

Photo of Sally Magnusson © Derek Prescott

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.

The Shapeshifter’s Daughter

Selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club Autumn Season 2025.

The spellbinding feminist retelling of the Norse myth of Hel, the Goddess of the Underworld, set in the magical landscape of Orkney, from the Sunday Times bestselling author Sally Magnusson.

Nothing, on earth or below it, freezes faster than the worthless heart.

Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, 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 aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death’s travellers to her ice-locked 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. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands to die.

As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she thinks she is isn’t who she is really meant to be.

A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter celebrates the joy of reclaiming our stories.

Order a hardback copy of the book from bookshop.org.

Pre-order a paperback copy of the book from bookshop.org – released 04 June 2026.