Moonspinners (Coronet Books) [Paperback]

Mary Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 1991 | Series: Coronet Books

Nicola Ferris, on leave from her job as a secretary in Athens, has been looking forward to a quiet week's holiday in Crete, enjoying the wild flowers and the company of her cousin Frances. But before she even reaches her destination Nicola stumbles on evidence of a murderous crime involving a young Englishman and a group of people tied together by blood and the bonds of greed. For the first time in her life Nicola meets a man and a situation she cannot deal with ...

Editorial Reviews

Review

'One of the most stupendously successful authors ever' -- Sunday Express 'Mary Stewart is magic' -- New York Times

From the Inside Flap

When beautiful Nicola Ferris chose the remote island of Crete for her vacation, all she desired was to experience the ancient and brooding land on her own.

But one day her impulse led her on a little-used path into the foreboding White Mountains. And there she found a man in hiding -- for reasons he could not explain.

Warned to stay away, Nicola was unable to obey. And before she realized what she had uncovered, she found herself thrust into the midst of an alarming plot in which she would become the prey . . . .

"Here is magical writing . . . . A story of breathless excitement . . . seasoned with spirit and humor." -- Los Angeles Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Coronet (April 18, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340013613
• ISBN-13: 978-0340013618
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,757,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mart Stewart, one of the most popular novelists writing today, was born in Sunderland, County Durham, England. After boarding-school, she recieved a B.A. with first class honors in English Language and Literature from Durham University and went on for her M.A. Later she returned to her own University as a Lecturer in English. She married in 1945. Her husband is Sir Frederick Stewart, who is Chairman of the Geology Department at Edinburgh University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.Mary Stewart's career as a novelist began in 1954 with the publication of Madam, Will You Talk? Since then she has published fifteen successful novels, including The Last Enchantment, the third book of the magical trilogy about the legendary enchanter Merlin and young Arthur. Her books for young readers, The Little Broomstick (1971) and Ludo and the Star Horse (1974), quickly met with the same success as her other novels. In 1968, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. In 1971, the Scottish Chapter of the International PEN Association awarded her the Frederick Niven prize for the The Crystal Cave. In 1974, the Scottish Arts Council Award went to Ludo and the Star Horse.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite book ever!, May 20, 2005

By 

E.Ragsdale "emrag" (Topeka, KS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moonspinners (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading Nine Coaches Waiting I went looking for more books by Mary Stewart, and this one somehow caught my attention first. The Moonspinners is awesome, one of Stewart's best.

Nicola is a young woman on holiday from her job at the Embassy in Greece, who agrees to meet up with an older friend on Crete. She arrives before her friend, and goes exploring in the mountains above the village where she will be staying. There she finds Mark, who has been wounded by a gunshot, and his Greek friend Lambis, and ends up tending to Mark for a night while Lambis goes back to their boat. Nicola finds out that Mark's brother Colin was kidnapped by Cretan men after they witnessed the possible murder of a Greek man, and Mark himself was wounded and presumed dead by the kidnappers/murderers. Nicola goes down to the village and meets up with her friend Frances, but can't seem to stop thinking about Mark and his brother, and does some sleuthing of her own, though she promised Mark she'd stay out of it.

I think what I love most about this book is how subtly the romance between Mark and Nicola develops--they're only together for about twenty or thirty pages of the entire book, but their interest in each other is very believable and not contrived or forced for the sake of the story.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let the Legend of the Moon-Spinners Bind You!, March 8, 2004

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Moonspinners (Mass Market Paperback)

Who can resist the spell that Mary Stewart weaves in one of her best novels?
Not a soul.
Technically, 'The Moonspinners' has all the right ingredients, beginning with a fantastically deceptive setting--the untamed Cretan countryside, described to perfection with its whirling white-sailed windmills, its craggy landscape peppered with enough fragrant wildflowers to fill Dioscorides' Greek Herbal and its people, proud, fiercely patriotic, bravely bearing the scars of war and the miseries of a sparse existence.

The protagonists are charmingly intrepid, managing to keep their British stiff upper lips intact even in the face of a wildly unstable group of gun-happy thugs-turned kidnappers. Our narrator is a deliciously innocent, well-meaning and attractive vacationer, Nicola Ferris, (think Elizabeth Shue in 'The Saint' not perky Hayley Mills who in the movie of the same name was a burgeoning adolescent--this Nicola is a consummate situation-manager on a mission, accustomed to controlling her life and the people around her)who in refusing to back out of an affair she unwittingly steps into, discovers the one situation she cannot manage without help. It takes the handsome stranger, in the guise of competent English tourist Mark Langley (and yes, a young Peter McEnery will do quite,) to turn the tables on her while pressing her into a less dominant role that she finds she actually likes. Mark's teenaged brother, the kidnapped Colin and his clever forays into the stranger world of British slang, provides an effective comedic foil for the straight-laced Mark and his Greek counterpart, the English-idiom-challenged caique-owner, Lambis. The insiduous-pallikarathes villan, Stratos, one part charm to two parts unstable lethal weapon, the slithering eel-like Tony, and sadly-complaisant, hard-working Sofia, round up the players along with Nicola's older but wiser cousin, Frances.
Don't miss this one--the prose alone will have you chucking your stalward life and buying a Greek wildflower guide along with a one-way ticket to Crete just to stand in the presence of those languidly spinning windmills!

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the best, May 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Moonspinners (Mass Market Paperback)

I, too, was amazed to discover how different the book was from the screen adaptation. As much as I enjoyed the movie, the novel is on another level entirely. After reading it, I would suggest that the movie should bear the sub-title "Roughly suggested by Mary Stewart's novel of the same name".

Nicola may have her moments of weakness, but unlike many other Stewart heroines who seem to go around in a bit of a fog to keep the suspense level higher, she does the best she can mentally with the information at her disposal. Her actions and reactions were uniformly true to her established character, and her courage was both admirable and somehow believeable.

The suspense builds steadily right up to the end with no let-down, and unless your satisfaction depends on a heroine who also qualifies as a kind of samauri-warrior, I don't think you'll be disappointed in Nicola's personal involvement in the climactic sequence. (Compare her end-role with that of the heroine in Ms. Stewart's next novel "This Rough Magic" - which bears a striking similarity to "The Moonspinners" - and I think you'll see what I mean.)

Personally, I rate the mystery and suspense books I read on a scale from one to ten, and "The Moonspinners" is one of only three that has gotten a 10 from me.