Dark Earth Stott Rebecca (2023)

This historical novel takes place in AD 500 on an island in the Thames. Isla has secretly learned her fathers sophisticated sword-making skills, even though women are forbidden to enter a forge. Her sister Blue has a secret of her own: at low tide on the night of each new moon, she visits the bones of a mud woman drowned by the elders of her tribe as a warning to anyone who refuses to remain silent. When the local Seax overlord discovers Islas secret, the sisters flee across the water to Londinium, the walled ghost city. There they find sanctuary among squatters, emigrants, travellers, and looters led by the mysterious Crowther, who live in an abandoned brothel and bathhouse. Trouble follows them into the haunted city. The novel returns to the founding of Britain to explore womens attempts to find kin in a world ruled by blood ties, feuds, and men pursuing the creation of a nation.