FIREFLIES IN WINTER Out FEBRUARY 2026
FIREFLIES IN WINTER
by eleanor shearer
A gripping novel of two young women fighting for survival on the edge of the wilderness, and the love that simultaneously sustains them and threatens their very existence, from the author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick River Sing Me Home.
Nova Scotia, 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her…until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.
Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.
Deep among the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’s past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom—and of love….
With evocative prose and immersive storytelling, Fireflies in Winter is a powerful novel about love—love for the wilderness in all its unforgiving beauty, and love between two women who risk everything to be together.
“Beautiful... a subtle and morally complex depiction of the price of freedom.”
— Publishers Weekly
RIVER SING ME HOME
by eleanor shearer
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK AND ONE OF TIME’S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2023
Powerful, moving and redemptive, RIVER SING ME HOME tells of a mother's desperate search to find her stolen children and her freedom.
We whisper the names of the ones we love like the words of a song. That was the taste of freedom to us, those names on our lips.
Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy.
These are the names of her children. The five who survived, only to be sold to other plantations. The faces Rachel cannot forget.
It's 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children, even if the truth is more than she can bear.
With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana and on to Trinidad, to the dangerous river and the open sea.
Only once she knows their stories can she rest.
Only then can she finally find home.
“A tender exploration of one woman’s courage in the face of unbelievable cruelty.”
— The Observer
Praise for River Sing Me Home
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TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023
“River Sing Me Home weaves together a historical accounting of the perils of British emancipation with a moving interrogation of what freedom really means.”
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The Guardian
“Shearer treats such a difficult and underexamined part of history deftly and honourably. She sieves through it to give us what all good novelists do; the essential without sacrificing the specific and the historical.”
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The Observer
“A tender exploration of one woman’s courage in the face of unbelievable cruelty.”
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Stylist Loves
“Heartwarming and heartbreaking, and at its core, a testament to the power of love.”
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Boston.com
Most Anticipated Books of 2023
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Stylist
“Full of love and compassion, this will be everywhere next year”
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AARP
Best New Books of Winter 2023
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The Montecito Journal
“Rachel is a strong, determined woman willing to do anything for the truth and this book is magnificent.”
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Ms. Magazine
“A heartrending story about a far too little-known time in history.“
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The Times
“There are moments of joy as well as intense pain along the way. Shearer does not shy away from the horror of her subject matter, but the strength of Rachel’s maternal love is a constant miracle.”
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Daily Mail
“Action-packed, emotionally demanding, richly described, the novel paints an extraordinary portrait of motherly love and hope.”
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Good Housekeeping
“An incredible debut novel about the power of a mother’s love.”
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Red Magazine
“A powerful, gripping and poetic novel about the strength of a mother’s love.”
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The Sunday Times
“Less interested in highlighting the iniquities of slavery, more concerned with the power and persistence of maternal love, this is an intense and absorbing debut.”
Other Writing
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‘River Sing Me Home’ and the Lengths a Mother Will Go for Her Children
An interview with Shondaland
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The Octopus
A short story about motherhood, race and octopuses in Harper’s Bazaar
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The Stories We Don't Tell About Slavery
An essay for Big Issue North. The abolition of slavery did not come about just through the actions of benevolent white men. It was the product of rebellions and resistance by the slaves themselves.
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For Me and My White-Passing Family Members, Our Heritage Has a Complicated Legacy
An essay for Good Housekeeping. My family has both been too Black and not Black enough.
About
Eleanor Shearer is a mixed-race writer and the granddaughter of Windrush generation immigrants. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the English coast so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea. For her Master's degree in Politics at the University of Oxford, Eleanor studied the legacy of slavery and the case for reparations, and her fieldwork in St. Lucia and Barbados helped inspire her first novel, RIVER SING ME HOME.
Eleanor is currently working on her second novel, as well as the screenplay for the film adaptation of RIVER SING ME HOME with AL Films and BBC Film.
Eleanor is represented by Peters Fraser and Dunlop. For all enquires, contact lrobertson@pfd.co.uk.
