Elizabeth Cunningham

A Novel (The Maeve Chronicles)

The Passion of Mary Magdalen

In this Celtic wonder tale, young Maeve and Jesus, brimming with youthful charm and arrogance, find each other and fall in love, forging a bond that is stronger than death. Born to eight warrior-witches on a magical isle, Maeve heads for druid college with high hopes of meeting the Mysterious Other she has glimpsed only in visions and dream.

The Beginning

Magdalen Rising

a novel

Bright dark Madonna

Red-robed priestess

"The traditional tale of Rumpelstiltskin turns on the revelation of a name. But what if the spinner of gold has no name? What if she is a girl, outcast from her village -- welcomed only by the one she has always feared as witch? In this classic early novel, Elizabeth Cunningham deftly works her magic, transforming a familiar tale into a startling encounter with our deepest human longings. The nameless narrator's journey from bitterness to wonder is a profound meditation on the alchemy of the spirit." -- Cover, p. [4].

How to Spin Gold

Raised by weather-witching mothers on the Isle of Women, Maeve meets her soulmate in Esus of Nazareth as they both apprentice with the Druids on Mona, leading Maeve to discover her strength and courage as Esus uncovers his destiny.

Daughter of the Shining Isles

The delicate relationship growing between Adam Underwood and Eva Brooke is nearly destroyed with the reappearance of his former wife, Lilith.

The Wild Mother

Taking its inspiration from the story of Rumpelstiltskin and the spinner of gold, a novel tells the story of a mysteriously deformed girl from a medieval village. By the author of The Return of the Goddess. IP.

A Woman's Tale

The wife of an Episcopal priest fashions an image out of clay that becomes a pagan godess, one who pits erotic love against charity, paganism against Christianity, and woman as the preserver of Earth against man as its destroyer

A Divine Comedy

The Return of the Goddess

After a life of passion and adventure that has brought her through slavery to the Resurrection garden, through the controversies of the Early Church to a hermit cave in southern gaul, Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen, returns to the Holy Isles accompanied by Sarah, her daughter with Jesus. Their mission: to find Maeve's first-born child, stolen from her by the druids more than forty years ago. Since then, Maeve's homeland has suffered it's own trials--Roman invasion and occupation. The Celtic tribes to the east and south are under direct rule, and the Romans are determined to rout the resistance of the western tribes, resistance fueled by the druids of Mona. Just before she crosses the channel from Gaul to Britain, Maeve encounters a man she mistakes for Jesus's ghost. This familiar stranger is equally haunted, and the two are drawn into a moonstruck liason that will entwine their lives in "an impossible Celtic knot." For unbeknownst to Maeve at the time, he is none other than General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the newly-appointed Roman Governor of Britain. Maeve keeps this troubling tryst a secret even after she finds her long-lost daughter Boudica, the fierce and charismatic queen of the Iceni tribe. Druid-trained in her youth, Boudica married the Iceni king, hoping to rally him to a rebellion for which he has no stomach. Now estranged from her husband, Boudica keeps the old ways, sustained by her pride in her descent form her father (and Maeve's!) the late great druid Lovernios. Seeking to circumvent disaster, Maeve travels back and forth from Iceni country to Mona, from the heart of native resistance to a Roman fort on the Western front, steadfast in her conviction: "Love is as strong as death."

A Novel

Red-Robed Priestess

“The best one yet!”—Catherine MacCoun, author of On Becoming an Alchemist "As usual, Cunningham provides plenty of juicy controversy embodied by vivid characters and expressed in vigorous action, all in crisply drawn biblical settings."—Booklist "Gleefully iconoclastic. For that dwindling demographic with a sense of humor about religion, Maeve’s profane skewering of the all-too-human foibles of the Church fathers is a hoot." Kirkus Reiews ""Elizabeth Cunningham has again delved into her fabulous treasure trove of impeccable research, and come up with gold. In Bright Dark Madonna, her interweaving of Biblical-Celtic themes brings the first century to life with unexpected freshness and many surprises." —Katherine Neville, author of The Eight and The Fire After playing an intimate role in the mystery of the Resurrection, what is left for Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen? Never a follower, will she emerge as a leader of the early church? Will she retire quietly to mother a sacred bloodline? Will she set sail for France to proselytize and go spelunking? The answer: all and none of the above. No sooner does Maeve open her mouth to preach the gospel her way than a fierce debate begins about what to do with the child she is carrying. Maeve has her own ideas about where best to raise the savior’s scion. When she returns to Temple Magdalen, the holy whorehouse she founded, a custody battle of biblical proportions ensues. Maeve, her infant daughter Sara, and Jesus’ mother flee to the remote Taurus Mountains where they live in hiding among the Galatians until a mysterious man is dumped on their doorstep more dead than alive. When Maeve discovers the identity of the man she has healed, she is appalled and determined to keep her family’s secret. But Maeve has reckoned without the will of her brilliant, angry adolescent daughter who resolves to find out the truth about her father—for herself. Required reading for fans and accesible to those new to The Maeve Chronicles, Bright Dark Madonna takes the reader on a breathtaking journey from the temple porticoes of Jerusalem, to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, to the south of France, and, as always, to the treacherous, beautiful terrain of the human heart.

Bright Dark Madonna

The Goddess is returning! She takes shape in the hands of an Episcopal priest’s shy, retiring wife. She invades the dreams of a grande dame who thinks women priests are a scandal. She lures a poker-playing ex-convict onto unfamiliar terrain, literally. Then there is the mysterious old man in the wood, who’s been watching, waiting for a sign of her return. Who is the Goddess? Where has she been for so long? What does she want from the four human beings whose lives she is turning upside down and inside out? As they confront these questions, Esther, Spencer, Marvin and Fergus find themselves drawn together, forging friendships across boundaries of age, class and race, discovering—and recovering—powerful, erotic passions. All their encounters, with themselves and each other, lead them deeper into Blackwood, an old estate that shelters an imperiled grove of trees sacred to the Goddess, a grove it becomes their mission to save. The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy marks Cunningham’s first explicit exploration of Christianity and the power of a divine feminine, long forgotten, obscured, and suppressed by the Church. She went on to write The Maeve Chronicles, featuring her iconic, outspoken Celtic Magdalen. The Return of the Goddess takes the reader inside the world of Cunningham’s origins where a gap in a wall leads from the church to the sacred grove. Twenty-six years after its first publication The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy remains a classic in what has become a movement, both within established religions and beyond, to reclaim the goddess and to embody her return.

Ellen Zieselman

Gustave Baumann was a superb woodcarver, who was captivated by puppet theatre. In the 1930s, Baumann carved a collection of marionettes for plays he wrote about New Mexico's cultural heritage. Featuring the photographs of twenty-five marionettes, this book tells the story of Baumann's theatre, describing the plays, sets, and costuming.

Share Their World

The Hand-carved Marionettes of Gustave Baumann

“Cunningham weaves Hebrew scripture, Celtic and Egyptian mythology, and early Christian legend into a nearly seamless whole, creating an unforgettable fifth gospel story in which the women most involved in Jesus’s ministry are given far more representation.”—Library Journal “This year’s must-have summer reading.”—KINK Radio “Lavish and lusty . . . Cunningham’s Celtic Magdalen is as hot in the mouth as Irish whiskey.”—Beliefnet (chosen as one of this year’s “heretical beach-books”) “Explodes off the page with its tales of love, hope, power, and redemption—book clubs looking for a great discussion, take note.”—TheBookBrothel.com

Elizabeth Cunningham

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