Dena Bain Taylor has spent most of her life in Toronto, Canada, pursuing her joint passions: music and books. She is a classically-trained singer. She is also a writer, critic, tv script advisor, literary award juror, and erstwhile owner of Ben Abraham Books (specializing in the occult). Along the way, she has had a long career at the University of Toronto – first as a Professor of English Literature, then as the Director of the prestigious Health Sciences Writing Centre.
She has published extensively, and eclectically: an English dictionary for Chinese students; a couple of textbooks on writing in the Health Sciences; numerous articles and talks on William Blake, sf/f and the occult; and sf/f short stories. In 2020, she published 100 Years at the Beach: A History of the Beach Hebrew Institute, 1919-2019 (ECW Press). Bones & Keeps is her first novel, a historical fantasy about the great Scandinavian hero Beowulf. Dena holds an ARCT in Voice Performance, as well as an MA and PhD in English Literature from the University of Toronto. And somehow, through all of this, she has managed to raise two amazing children. She now lives with her husband in a small palace in the sky overlooking Lake Ontario.
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Bones and keeps
The year is 542 and the great king Beowulf is midway in life between slaying the monster Grendel and his fatal battle with a dragon. He rules his kingdom on the west coast of Sweden wisely and gives rich gifts to his thanes, defends his keep and fills it with treasure. But then his sister Skuld, the most powerful witch-queen of the Gautar people, pronounces his doom, just as a foreign woman arrives from the far south, escaping an Alexandria gripped in the plague that is destroying the Byzantine Empire. Suddenly Beowulf is propelled into a battle for his life and kingdom, and into the wars of the gods where acts of love and betrayal shape the destiny of the worlds.
Meticulously researched, the historical fantasy of Bones and Keeps immerses the reader in a time when gods and monsters walk the living world, when survival depends on the strength of a king’s arm, and the inscrutable forces of weird threaten the fall of gods and humanity alike.
7 x 10 Softcover