Unhallowed Shepherd

The Unhallowed Shepherd: A Novel of the Irish WerewolfAn ink-stained-priest's hands wake with blood beneath them - and all that remains honest within him is the wolf.On a howling 9th-century Atlantic coast in Ireland, Father Ciarán mac Aodhán translates pre-Christian verse into Latin - telling himself that the two parts of his soul might be reconciled onto parchment. Then the sheep are torn apart. Then a fisherman. Then a young boy whom Ciarán had baptised himself. The scratches on his arms have no explanation he dares utter, and elderly Muiríol, the healer, observes him crossing the churchyard, making a sign that isn't the Cross itself.When a mild-mannered Northumbrian scholar named Brother Tadhg arrives bearing forbidden texts - and promising a cure - Ciarán finally sees hope from above. But Muiríol recognizes the form of an even older craving - and the hill below the monastery has really been thinking for over 1,000 years. What does one man owe the very earth that shaped him - and what will the land exact in return?For fans of Andrew Michael Hurley's 'The Loney', Francis Spufford's 'Golden Hill', Paul Kingsnorth's 'The Wake', and Glen Duncan's 'The Last Werewolf': here's a bilingual, bone-deep folk horror story concerning faith, heritage, and the shepherd transformed into the monster lurking in the shadows.