The Strange Woman by Stephanie Shields is a novel that brings together the lives and challenges faced by women. From a 17th century Yorkshire witch trial to the present, it’s a bubbling cauldron of historical fiction, modern romance, and magical realism - a fusion of feminism, farming and the fantastical. The novel is based on the Yorkshire witch trial held at York Castle in 1622 – the trial of The Timble Witches. The Strange Woman and her friends are accused of being witches, in a remote Yorkshire valley, in the early seventeenth century. But their accuser, the poet Edward Fairfax, has picked on the wrong woman. This novel moves from the dark days of the early seventeenth century with its witch hunts, trials, and privations to the way we live now. Stephanie Shields writes with a strong sense of place, and pace, and casts a humorous and often satirical eye over life and aspirations in the same Yorkshire village, four hundred years on, uniting past and present in a gripping and dramatic finale, as a demon returns. The Strange Woman is delighting lovers of historical fiction, modern romance, and magical realism. It is a tale about passion, obsession, and friendship spanning four hundred years, played out in a place where past and present meet. It was a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2021.