The Fey are gone...and with it, magic. At least, that is how things seem with the demise of the Dark Goddess and The Bard.

"Lord what fools these mortals be."

Penheram is a quaint, sleepy English village where people escape the 21st century. Hiding from the world of laptop computers, the Internet, and wireless communications, is Ella. Once a celebrated writer, now barren of ideas and drive, she resigns to a life of a deadline-free solitude. Everything changes with the arrival of a shape shifting thief. Suddenly everyone from the local librarian to the lady of the manor begin to change, revealing true natures and dangerous secrets.

Something in this sleepy English village is awakening...and some of these things were better left alone.

New Zealand's Philippa Ballantine has always loved the fantasy genre, fostered by an early introduction to Lord of the Rings as a bedtime story. She has been writing her own novels since the age of thirteen and melds her love of history and fantasy together in her work. Her first novel Weaver's Web was e-published, where as her second Chasing the Bard, in which Shakespeare finds himself in his own midsummer nightmare was published in 2005.

Philippa Ballantine's profile page

"From the outset of [Chasing the Bard] I was captured by the story and remained curious throughout reading. Ballantine has done an excellent job of describing and explaining the characters so that they really came alive for me and I had a clear picture in my head of what each looked like. It's an original story and I loved it!"
- Amazon.com