The Whisper of Stars

A frozen island.
A monastery-turned-political-prison.
A cipher inked in blood.
When anarchist poet Katya Efremova is transferred to the prison colony on Solovetsky Island, she finds an enigma among her returned possessions - a blood-stained book containing a cipher left by her murdered mother, written on the day she died.
Following her mother's clues, Katya begins to unravel a centuries-old mystery woven into the history of Solovetsky Island. Finding the island's legendary power might be the key to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime, but Katya wasn't sent to Solovetsky by chance. The head of the government's spy network is watching, and there will be no hope of a free Russia if he takes hold of the magic hidden beneath the White Sea snow.

Cristin Williams was born to Russian-English translators working for the US military. She now lives in Belgium with her Flemish husband and four daughters. In 2010, she won the Paul Gillette award for historical fiction.