Showing results for "John Williams" in Historical Fiction

After the brutal murder of his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, Octavian, a shy and scholarly youth of nineteen, suddenly finds himself heir to the vast power of Rome. He is destined, despite vicious power struggles, bloody wars and family strife, to transform his realm and become the greatest ruler the western world had ever seen: Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor.

The three novels that make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.

In the years following the death of Jesus Christ, John the Apostle, now a frail, blind old man, lives in forced exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. It is against this turbulent background and inspired by Jesus's radical message of love and forgiveness that John comes to dictate his Gospel.

Das neue Meisterwerk von John Williams. Verbündete, Gegner, Feinde – ein Herrscherleben in all seinen Facetten. Octavian ist neunzehn, sensibel, wissbegierig und will Gelehrter werden. Doch als Großneffe und Adoptivsohn Julius Cäsars fällt ihm nach dessen Ermordung ein gewaltiges Erbe zu: Ihm, der von schwächlicher Konstitution, aber enormer Willenskraft ist, wird es durch Glück, List, Intelligenz und Entschlossenheit gelingen, das riesige Römische Reich in eine Epoche des Wohlstands und Friedens zu führen.

As Hercule Poirot sifts through his post one particular morning, he alights upon a letter from an elderly and (as it transpires), exceedingly rich spinster - Miss Emily Arundell. She is clearly in great distress and seeking his help, but doesn’t say why. Her only specific mention is ‘the incident of the dog’s ball’. However, what intrigues Poirot is the date of the communication - it was written two months ago. He persuades Captain Hastings that they must visit the lady with all haste.

In 1796, Martha becomes the mistress of the struggling Plas Ingli estate, at only 18 years old. She is pregnant and suicidal. Though she loves her husband, David, dearly, she is desperately lonely in a strange house, and her quick wit and cutting humour make her as many enemies as friends. There are mysteries surrounding the great fire that devastated the estate, but Martha's questions about it remain unanswered. Nobody else seems to realise that their haughty servant, the disinherited son of the local squire, is not as trustworthy as the rest of the family would like to think.

"Stoner" - pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1965 - è stato per parecchio tempo uno dei grandi romanzi dimenticati della letteratura americana. John Williams racconta la vita di un uomo, Stoner appunto, che, nato in una famiglia di contadini poveri, finisce per scoprire dentro di sé una passione struggente per la letteratura e diventa professore. È la storia di un uomo che conduce una vita semplice al limite della frugalità. Una vita che lascia poche tracce.

Martha Morgan, the beautiful young mistress of the Plas Ingli estate, is warned that trouble is brewing for her family. She tries to carry on with her life - but then she receives the most terrible news that any young wife can imagine. Despair threatens to overwhelm Martha, but she has many responsibilities and must live up to expectations. Little by little, with help from her family and from some of the more colourful local characters, she sets out to prove that she is more than a match for the scoundrels who have committed an appalling crime.

The third novel in the best-selling eight-volume Angel Mountain Saga, about the life and times of the incorrigible, passionate and very imperfect heroine Martha Morgan. Martha Morgan, the Mistress of Plas Ingli, has a premonition of grave danger to come. As the effects of poverty and starvation afflict the neighbourhood, Martha tries to influence the corrupt Turnpike Trusts, who are compounding the miseries of the poor by building new and illegal toll gates and rigorously collecting tolls.

The year is 1807, and Martha is in the process of recovering from the murder of her husband, David. The murderers have been brought to justice, and now she looks forward to a happier future in the company of Owain Laugharne, the new love of her life. Plans for the marriage are far advanced when Owain disappears without a trace.

It is 1845, and Martha Morgan, mistress of Plas Ingli, is feeling her age. She receives warnings that she should 'take care'. Her beloved estate collapses, and she has to call upon her deepest reserves of strength in order to survive. But her misery is lessened when she meets a travelling evangelist on the summit of Angel Mountain. It turns out that the fate of minor prophet Amos Jones is inextricably bound up with her own. A single indiscretion in Tycanol Wood splits the community and tests the loyalty of friends and family to the limit.

In the Wild West of Wales, in the year 1808, a shepherd is ambushed and left in the roadway, more dead than alive, with three stripes carved across his chest. A note, written in his own blood, is pinned to his skin. It reads, 'For Rhiwallwn. From Gruddnei'. Four sinister men who call themselves surveyors are clearly responsible for this crime and others that follow. It emerges that there is a 'campaign of retribution' against selected individuals. Mistress Martha Morgan, a young widow with five children, is at the top of the hit list.

Those who are familiar with the Angel Mountain Saga series will find some characters and settings that they know and love; but this story ranges far more widely, leaving West Wales behind and taking in episodes set in the industrial districts of Merthyr Tydfil, and in Paris. It is a strange story of an elderly lady who calls herself Susanna Ravenhill and who lives far more dangerously than is recommended for someone of her age. She has a dark secret to hide and she is pursued relentlessly by a group of armed men. One day they will catch up with her....

After Captain John Carlisle’s dance with death, he’s retreated to the serenity of the Oneida village with his beloved Dellis McKesson to hide from the inevitable truth that war is coming to the Mohawk River Valley. When duty calls, and John’s expertise is needed to negotiate a treaty with the Six Nations of the Iroquois and the Crown, he’ll once again be forced to decide between his conscience and his king.

This tale is set in the year 1810 and follows hot on the heels of the story recounted in Sacrifice. An ex-slave is shipwrecked on the shore of Skomar Island, and two strange objects found on his person end up in the possession of Mistress Martha Morgan of Plas Ingli. This leads her to involvement in the anti-slavery movement and into very grave personal danger, as her own enemies have to be rescued from a man who has a very sinister mission.

In Lincoln's Bodyguard, an alternative version of American history, President Lincoln is saved from assassination. Though he prophesied his own death - the only way he believed the South would truly surrender - Lincoln never accounted for the heroics of his bodyguard, Joseph Foster. A biracial mix of white and Miami Indian, Joseph makes an enemy of the South by killing John Wilkes Booth and preventing the death of the president.

Born Black in the Jim Crow South of the early 1900s, John feels like the rabbits he hunts to feed himself, his mother, and his sisters...always running from White men. The Johnsons, owners of the largest peach farm and just about everything else in town, produce some strange and bitter fruit with their racism. So, when Carolyn Johnson sets her sights on John and his friends, they decide to escape before her vicious threats and well-practiced lies add them to her family’s crop, but things go horribly wrong.

Mary Bet, the youngest of nine children, was born the same year the first railroad arrived in their county. As she comes of age during the South’s reconstruction and industrialization, she must learn to overcome her family’s curse: the deaths of her mother and siblings, a deaf and damaged older brother, and her father’s growing insanity and rejection of God.

Jon Zachery moves his wife and two small children to Meridian, Mississippi, in 1968 to begin US Navy flight training. He and his family wind up in the middle of a KKK resurgence. Jon must cope with the winnowing process that is Navy flight training while keeping his family safe. His wife Teresa discovers she is wed to the US Navy every bit as much as she is wed to Jon.

Building Bridges is set in 1965 in Anderston, Glasgow and examines the reaction of deserted husband, Billy Speirs, and his family to the return of his estranged wife, Bernie, whose mother has been taken seriously ill. It is a tale of bitterness and betrayal but also of the absolute enduring strength of love at a time when a community was being sliced up to make way for a stretch of inner city motorway and the Glasgow Kingston Bridge.