When a neglected teenager - Emily - becomes infatuated by a mysterious medicine man who turns up in the local market square she finds herself competing for his attention with the other women of her town. But naive as she seems, Emily is the first to discover the stranger's dark side, and when she does she holds his fate - and the fate of the women of her community - in her hands ...

The Herbalist is the electrifying first novel from Hennessy XO New Irish Writing Award winner, Niamh Boyce.

It is a deeply moving and viscerally powerful novel about the lives of women in 1930s Ireland - an unforgettable story of love, shame, hypocrisy and courage.

'Niamh Boyce's compelling female characters push against the rigid social parameters of 1930s Ireland, yearning for the light of the outside world, which comes in the shape of a stranger trading in herbs, cures, complications and danger' Dermot Bolger