Labyrinth

Set both in the present, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the book has two heroines: modern-day Alice, who begins the novel helping out on an archaeological dig, and Alaïs, a teenage girl in Carcassonne at the time of the Fourth Crusade, which was launched against the Cathars on the grounds of their heresy, although it was always in reality a land grab by northern France against the south.

For Alice, the trouble starts when she falls into a mountain cave and finds two skeletons and an ancient ring with a labyrinth symbol, which it turns out that many (often unsavoury) people want to obtain. For Alaïs, it begins when her father entrusts her with one of the three books that are needed to summon the true grail.

Labyrinth is very much a Girl's Own story: a grail quest in which women aren't helpless creatures to be rescued, or decorative bystanders, but central to the action, with the capacity to change history. The villains, in both eras, are also women.

In July 2006, Labyrinth reached 1,000,000 sales of the UK editions.