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  • Published: 11 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529947847
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $59.99
Categories:

No Fair Maidens

A wild journey with the lost goddesses of Britain

  • Kim Willis



Journeying through the oldest mythologies of Great Britain, No Fair Maidens brings magical heroines to the fore, so that we might reclaim our sense of what it means to be a woman: restoring our strength, wonder and connection to this place we call home.

When Kim Willis feels herself drifting from the path every woman is expected to take, she finds no solace in the ashrams of India or plant ceremonies of Peru. Instead, she’s pulled to the source of the Severn, hearing whispers of ancient matriarchs: shape-shifting enchantresses, scaly nymphs and goddesses who once commanded our lands. These are no fair maidens, but animalistic beasts, snaking along the edges of watery places where reality and the otherworld meet in the shadows.

As she uncovers their dormant power hidden in the rugged landscapes of Britain, women like Arianrhod, Melusine and Cerridwen awaken the spark of something ancient in Kim. Journeying from the Severn to Skye, Eryri to Northumberland, she navigates through grief, love, lust, and a new intuition, unveiling forgotten truths about sexual empowerment, sisterhood, motherhood, fertility, freedom and relationships.

Through the threads of folklore, history and landscape, here Kim identifies a better way of being for modern women and crafts a new narrative for Britain, where women are - and always were - a force of nature.

  • Published: 11 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529947847
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $59.99
Categories:

Praise for No Fair Maidens

This is a really important book, pulling on a half-forgotten golden thread of mythology from which we can draw inspiration and strength. Both experiential and scholarly research underpin Kim’s quest, and she makes herself open and vulnerable in a way which asks for a great deal of courage. Read this book – it might change your life! Brave, bold, authentic and true.

Fiona Collins, storyteller and author of Folk Tales for Bold Girls

In her empowering and moving memoir, Kim Willis asks important questions about the relevance of ancient myths to the complexities of contemporary life. Along the way, she introduces a cast of goddesses and female warriors who once roamed the British Isles and whose stories – until now – have long been buried. I found it utterly compelling.

Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side

Evocative, emotional and essential for any woman journeying on her path and seeking a sense of belonging. A triumph!

Jasmine Elmer, author of Goddess with a Thousand Faces

This a book I will return to again and again. How do we not all know these stories of powerful women? I want to study them till they are in my bones. I loved the blend of a modern single woman figuring things out through these ancient stories. I was inspired by Kim’s determination to follow her own path - it makes me feel much less weird for always going off on different winding roads. This book will inspire a lot of women to live life true to them. A movement begins!

Marianne Power, author of Help Me!

I loved journeying with these ancient, empowering, otherworldly women. Kim Willis is an expert storyteller, reminding us of the deep power and intuition within us all.

Emma Gannon, bestselling author of Table for One and A Creative Compass

I loved this book. Memoir, myth and magic wrapped up together in a sweep that is as intoxicating as it is revelatory. This is a book that is simultaneously enraging, tragic and empowering in its excavation of the stories of women that have been lost – and which Willis so deftly seeks and recentres. How can one book utterly change my sense of relationship to the British landscape, and to its women, and to myself? Because Kim Willis shows beautifully, brilliantly, that these are the same story. That tales trammel the paths on which we tread, and that there is nothing more important than finding the ones that lead us where we want to go.

Emily Hauser, bestselling author of Mythica