Black Body

New York, NY, U.S.A.: Villard Books, 1989. First Edition Second Printing Stated . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6" x 9. 517 pages in 44 Chapters. Dust jacket price $19.95 is unclipped. Black Body is a sweeping tale of good and evil -- and of a captivating woman intimately acquainted with both. Set in early eighteenth-century England, the story is told in the form of testimony given by an imprisoned witch who must reveal all the secrets of her race and her life, or be burned and become a black body. Alba is the rarest example of her race, the invert or white witch. An anomaly to her equally gentle but lunsightly sisters on Man's Isle because of uncommon beauty. Alba aone is able to pass as a sinner, as witches refer to humans, and to excite the desire of mortal men. After her mother is executed for witchcraft, Alba becomes the ward of a sinner, Lady Amanda Rathel, who brings the girl to London and instructs her in the ways and wiles of society. An extraordinary chronicle of an eighteenth century witch.