An Unkindness of Ravens — Dee Morrison Meaney

Hers was the inheritance of a lineage that stretched thousands of years back in time to the women who raised the first circles at Stonehenge, women who laid their dead in womb-shaped barrow graves. She was the last of those women, bound up in love of a great Viking, embroiled in war and intrigue until, in her old age, her world came to a bloody end at the Battle of Hastings. The historical characters in this first book of a trilogy, set in 11th century England, include Ethelred the Unraed, Edmund Ironsides, Cnut the Great, but at its heart are two less celebrated people caught in the era's turbulent crosswinds--the Viking, Thorkell the Tall, and the Earl of Wessex' sister, Branwen.