Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

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Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

Fantasy

Hemlock & Silver

by T. Kingfisher

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Quick take

Step inside the mirror, mirror on the wall in this delightfully dark and poisonous Snow White retelling.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Quirky

    Quirky

  • Illustrated icon, Puzzle

    Puzzle

  • Illustrated icon, Magical

    Magical

  • Illustrated icon, Based_on_a_Classic

    Based on a classic

Synopsis

Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.

Not to die, but to save—seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.

But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.

Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.

Or it might be the thing that kills them all.

Content warning

This book contains mentions of the death of a child.

Read a sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Hemlock & Silver.

Hemlock & Silver

CHAPTER 1

I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.

The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff. The king was a tired man of medium height, with sandy hair and deep grooves worn into the sides of his face. I hadn’t recognized him at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.

Still, he had looked naggingly familiar, and I thought perhaps he was one of my father’s friends, so I simply said, “Wait a moment, please,” and turned back to stripping rosemary leaves off thin wooden stems. (I always process rosemary after snorting adder venom. The fragrance of the rosemary helps to clear out the awful burnt smell of the venom.)

Then the little voice in my head whispered, One moment please, Your Majesty, and recognition crashed over me like cold water.

I spun back toward the man in the doorway. He wasn’t standing in profile, so I couldn’t see if his face was the same one that was stamped on coins, but Saints help me, he was wearing a circlet, a thin little silver thing, and surely no one would wear that except royalty. Which meant he really was the king after all, except that he was standing in my workroom, where he had no business being. And I had just ordered him to wait.

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Fantasy
View all
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Rebel Witch
Our Infinite Fates
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
The Lost Story
Silver Elite
The Courting of Bristol Keats
Water Moon
A Curse Carved in Bone
A Fate Inked in Blood
Five Broken Blades
Heartless Hunter
The Road of Bones
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Where the Library Hides
The Kingdom of Sweets
Hera
A Sorceress Comes to Call
This Princess Kills Monsters
Hell Bent
Kaikeyi
Weyward
The Unmaking of June Farrow
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
The Book of Magic
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
The City We Became
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Piranesi
Thistlefoot
Half Sick of Shadows
Ariadne
Ninth House
The Invisible Hour
Sourdough
Siren Queen
Fate of the Fallen
Practical Magic
Immortal Consequences
Hemlock & Silver