Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (2025) is the third novel in Heather Fawcett’s cozy fantasy romance series. The Emily Wilde books track the adventures and perils of Cambridge folklorist Emily as she is drawn deeper into the magical realms of Faerie, the subject of her study. In the third book, Emily finally arrives in the fascinating but dangerous realm of Silva Lupi to help take back the throne for her fiancé, Wendell Bambleby, the prince exiled by his stepmother. As Wendell and Emily navigate the watchful realm of Silva Lupi, they must fight a vengeful queen, a curse poisoning the land, and widespread skepticism within the kingdom about a union between a Faerie king and a mere mortal woman. In the process, they explore important themes such as Stories as a Means of Creating Reality, Leadership as Sacrifice, and The Transformative Power of Love.

Fawcett is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

This guide is based on the 2025 Orbit Books Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include sexual content, graphic violence, death by suicide, animal cruelty, and illness and death.

Plot Summary

Back from her dangerous adventure in the magical realm of Silva Lupi, Professor Emily Wilde accepts the marriage proposal of the faerie monarch Wendell Bambleby. Before Emily left the magical realm, she poisoned the wine of Queen Arna, Wendell’s cruel and vindictive stepmother who usurped his throne. Now Arna is missing, and the time is ripe for Wendell and Emily to ascend the throne and usher in a new era of peace. Silva Lupi is a vast and unpredictable Irish faerie realm, filled with murderous court politics and sentient trees whose very leaves have eyes. When Emily and Wendell arrive in Silva Lupi via a door on the Greek coast, they learn that Arna is assumed to be dead. Wendell, who knows his stepmother well, suspects her death is a ruse.

Wendell is unsure if the Courtly Fae—faerie nobility—will accept his claim, but after he bests Arna’s half-brother, Lord Taran, in a fight, Taran leads the court in capitulating to Wendell. Taran confirms Wendell’s suspicions about Arna’s death being a trick: Since the queen went missing, a mysterious curse has gripped many groves in the realm, poisoning the trees and the faeries. Taran thinks Arna is hiding inside the land itself, leaking her poison into the realm.

While Wendell quickly charms the Faerie court with his growing magic and personable nature, Emily feels the Fae look down on the prospect of a mortal queen. Emily is also disturbed by some of the nobility who make up Wendell’s council of ministers, including the beautiful golden-haired Lady in the Crimson Cloak, famed for committing so many murders that her cloak drips blood. However, she finds solidarity with the common faeries who run the castle, and Niamh, the mortal court scribe. Meanwhile, as news comes in of more groves falling prey to the curse, Emily and Wendell, along with Wendell’s half-sister Deilah, visit an infected grove of yew trees. The sticky mist that has gripped the trees turns faeries into murderous wraiths. After a murderous attack by the wraiths, Wendell and the others manage to burn down the grove, restricting the curse for now. Emily notes that the wasted land heals in the places where the injured Wendell’s blood falls. Her heart sinks as she realizes that Wendell may need to die for the land to live.

Determined to find another way to save the realm and Wendell, Emily travels to Corbann, Ireland, where Wendell has set up a cottage for Emily’s friends Lilja and Margret. From Corbann, Emily visits Trinity College in Dublin. In the library, Emily discovers a story that she believes can help her find Arna and stop her from poisoning the realm. In the story, a dying old king hides in a secret palace and curses his land. The new king finds his whereabouts through three clues, given by the old king’s servants, and slays him. Later, the new king is killed by a swarm of bees loyal to the old ruler.

In Trinity, Emily runs into her niece Ariadne, now an assistant to Emily’s Cambridge colleague, Dr. Farris Rose. Farris warns Emily against marrying Wendell, as faeries are too capricious to trust. He also reveals that Emily’s paternal grandfather did not die of a heart attack as Emily has always believed. Edgar Wilde fell in love with a beautiful faerie, followed her to Exmoor, and after she abandoned him, was slain by her people. Farris gives Edgar’s last journals to Emily to read.

Emily heads back to Faerie and begins the search for the clues by interviewing the oiche sidhe, the common faeries who do the housework in the palace. The clues lead Wendell and Emily to believe that Arna would often withdraw to a secret island, where she may now be hiding. Although Emily assumes the island is off the distant shore of Silva Lupi, a boggart—a shapeshifting creature—reveals that the island is a hidden realm inside Lake Silverlily, the water body bordering Wendell’s castle.

Accompanied by Wendell’s magical cat Orga, the two monarchs sail on a boat on the lake. Emily convinces Shadow, her aging dog, to stay behind in the palace. In the middle of their journey, Wendell suggests that Emily marry him immediately. Emily realizes that Wendell wants to wed her so that she is a legitimate ruler in case he perishes in the mission to stop Arna. Moved by his protectiveness, Emily agrees. Since intent constitutes marriage in Faerie, Emily and Wendell are wed through an embrace. The faeries on the riverbanks celebrate their union by lighting tiny lamps. After a while, the boat runs into an invisible object. Wendell jumps into the water with Emily and Orga, and the group lands on a tiny island with a dilapidated castle. Inside the castle, they find the body of Arna, who has just stabbed herself through the heart. Emily thinks this means the curse has lifted, but the sticky mist descends on them again. Realizing they have no other option to save the land, Wendell takes Arna’s dagger and drives it through his heart, ending his life. Wendell’s blood dispels the mist. Emily and Orga are transported back to the castle.

A desolate Emily realizes that by sacrificing herself, Arna denied Wendell (the new king) the opportunity to slay the old. The land needs the blood of a monarch to heal, which only she or Wendell could have provided. Wendell preferred to sacrifice himself than endanger Emily. As Wendell and Arna’s bodies are brought to the castle, Emily wracks her brain to find a way to bring Wendell back. She recalls her grandfather’s descriptions of the golden-haired faerie he loved and realizes that they match the Lady in the Crimson Cloak. In one entry, her grandfather describes the lady as having sent so many people to their deaths that she knows Death’s Door. With the help of the head housekeeper of the palace, Emily meets the Lady and asks her to show her the Door to Death. The lady tells Emily how to find the door in exchange for a safe passage out of Silva Lupi. She tells Emily that the door does not lead to death, which is irreversible, but to limbo, where Folk linger briefly before going to their final end.

As the Lady described, Emily finds the door in the shadow cast by Wendell’s body. However, since a mortal human cannot enter the realm, the head housekeeper and Shadow dive in and bring back Wendell. Wendell wakes up, but to everyone’s horror, so does Arna, who followed Wendell out of the afterlife. Determined to keep Arna from doing further harm, Wendell summons the Veil, a terrifying, interdimensional wasteland, and locks Arna inside it. Though newlyweds Emily and Wendell enjoy a tender reunion, Emily thinks that exiling Arna in the Veil is wrong, since Wendell is only perpetuating the cycle of punishment and revenge. In all the fairy tales Emily has consulted, punishing the old king ultimately harms the new monarch.

When Wendell refuses to pull Arna out of the Veil, Emily takes matters into her own hands. She travels to Ljosland, the setting of the first novel of the series, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Emily seeks the help of the Hidden King, her former suitor whom she fled in the first book, as only a monarch of Faerie ancestry can summon the Veil. Lying to the Hidden King that she was taken from him against her will, Emily impresses him with her heroic determination to enter a Wasteland which is certain to kill her. The Hidden King summons the Veil. Emily enters the cold, storm-ridden waste, and with the help of Shadow, she rescues Arna, bringing her back to Silva Lupi. Wendell agrees to let Arna live, giving her the small cottage she claims is her only desire. Though Arna assures him she has turned over a new leaf, Wendell wryly reflects that his stepmother will be up to her old games, sooner or later. However, everything in their realm being peaceful for now, Wendell and Emily decide to tour Silva Lupi so Emily can find more hidden, lost stories about the Faerie folk.