Glittering Images

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780449909805
• Outfit: New
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Description

It is the 1930s, and Charles Ashworth is dispatched by the Archbishop of Canterbury to learn the truth about the flamboyant Bishop of Starbridge, Adam Alexander Jardine, and his mousy wife. Do Jardine's outspoken denouncements of the Anglican Church's strict divorce laws have a personal motive? When he meets the cool and beautiful Lyle Christie, Mrs. Jardine's companion, Ashworth believes they do. But as he struggles to understand the strange relationships in the household, Ashworth ceases to be an innocent, objective observer. Slowly, he too is drawn into the secret drama that is being played out in the shadow of the cathedral, a drama that he could never have foreseen.

The first in Susan Howatch's acclaimed novels centering on the glorious Cathedral of Starbridge, Glittering Images is a masterful depiction of spiritual hubris, the seductions of power, and the moral dilemmas of England between the wars.

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Ultimate Prizes

Description

Reissue of the author's most famous and well-loved work, the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century. Neville Aysgarth, archdeacon, and right-hand man of the Bishop of Starbridge, has spent his life chasing worldly success. In 1942 he has a perfect wife, a perfect family and a perfect future in the Church of England - all ultimate prizes. Then Aysgarth meets an attractive young socialite and is soon dangerously and chaotically involved in adultery, hypocrisy and obsession. Tormented and on the brink of ruin, he must at last face the truth about himself, his marriage and the mysterious past he cannot discuss as he chases the most vital prize of all - his own survival! Witty, wise and compelling, Ultimate Prizes powerfully explores both the temptations of sex and success, and the ultimate themes of sin and salvation.

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The Wonder Worker (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Description

Young, lonely, and insecure, Alice Fletcher is on the verge of emotional collapse when she stumbles into St. Benet's Church to dodge the London drizzle. There, she witnesses a group of gifted healers led by the charismatic Nicholas Darrow. Gaining refuge at last, Alice is drawn--inexorably, seductively--into the complex network of relationships at St. Benet's healing center--as she falls immediately, dangerously, in love with Darrow himself.

Yet Darrow and his cutting-edge clergy are not all what they seem. And while Nicholas's dazzling powers now threaten to ruin all he attempts to save--including his own disturbed marriage--Alice's devotion to him deepens. Then a  devastating tragedy transports her to the shocking center of truth. Yet fueled by her love for Nicholas and a boldly emerging intuition, she will hold together the lives spinning wildly out of control--as she herself is transformed forever.

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Three years before The Wonder Worker was released, in the afterword of the sixth installment in her Starbridge set of ecclesiastical novels, Susan Howatch dashed her fans' dreams. Absolute Truths was to be her last intellectual surplice-ripper. Did this mean we would be left forever wondering whether megacharismatic Nicholas Darrow would find a way to meld his psychic talents and his religious calling? What about his sidekick and mentor, Lewis Hall--would he ever manage to control his substantial earthly appetites? And what of gifted substance-abuser Venetia Hoffenberg? Would she be forever denied the literary chance to just say no? Luckily for us, all three are back in Howatch's latest, serious sacerdotal romp. But The Wonder Worker plays out nowhere near Starbridge's great cathedral and is not even indirectly about Anglican power struggles or traditions. It is set instead in St. Benet's-by-the-Wall, a small church and healing center in London's inner city. The book does, however, feature all of the author's strengths: vivid characterization, scenes of flamboyant and unorthodox religious power, and emotionally exhilarating personal encounters. Nicholas Darrow is back, not as chief narrator, but seen through three sets of eyes: those of Alice, a young woman who seems to see him more clearly than anyone save his mentor; Lewis; and his disillusioned wife, Rosalind. Nicholas's own viewpoint reveals his life and job as healer extraordinaire swinging out of control. In addition to the pleasures of the multiple viewpoints, there are the usual (i.e. unusual) pleasures of watching Howatch make the spiritual flesh. Though she has often been compared to Anthony Trollope, one astute reviewer has termed her "the love child of Graham Greene and Iris Murdoch." Other writers might approach her talent, but few would dare follow up a scene in which Nicholas hypnotizes his wife into sex with an even more exciting one in which he is called to order by his spiritual adviser, a nun!

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Glamorous Powers (Church of England)

Description

"Fascinating...convincing...believable."
NEWSDAY
The time is 1940. Jonathan Darrow is an Anglican priest when he receives a shattering vision and knows he must leave the monastery that has been his home for seventeen years. As he plunges into the temptations of the real world, a crisis sends him into the labyrinth of his past to pluck out the buried truth beneath the deceptions he has been living through.


From the Paperback edition.

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The Heartbreaker: A Novel

Description

Deftly combining the sacred and the profane—the unmistakable hallmark of her fiction over the past decade—Susan Howatch gives us a spellbinding, suspenseful and psychologically intense new novel.

The financial heart of London—the City—is an adrenaline-charged square mile deep in recession in the 1990s, a place where sex is just another commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. And the City is where the life of Gavin Blake, who sells sex to high flyers, is finally about to unravel.
In the center of the City is St. Benet’s, a church that ministers to the casualties of this affluent but amoral society. Carta Graham, the St. Benet’s fundraiser, is at once attracted to Gavin when they meet through a mutual friend, but slowly she realizes that she has entered a relationship far more complex than she could ever have imagined.

Gavin is desperate to escape from his world of prostitution, pornography and violence, but as his involvement with Carta and St. Benet’s deepens, the dangers that encircle him escalate until his life itself is on the line. Carta is determined to help him—but will their mysterious journey together be lifesaving or soul-destroying? All she can do is fight her hardest to help Gavin survive.

Consistently surprising and powerfully moving, The Heartbreaker is Susan Howatch’s most gripping novel yet.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Sins of the Fathers

Description

"Full of fascinating dialogue, surprising twists of plot, and well-developed, memorable characters, a stunningly successful work of fiction."
NASHVILLE BANNER
This is the tumultuous novel of men and women pitted against a world of wealth, power, and privilege...the story of the powerful Van Zale clan, and the man, Cornelius Van Zale, whose dynastic struggle to control a great fortune becomes the center of his life. When the world of the Van Zales, of servants and country houses, of European summers and Bar Harbor clambakes, polite marriages and discreet affairs, suddenly begins to fall apart, we see this glamorous sphere for what it really is--rife with ruthless, power-hungry men, fortune hunters, secret sex, blackmail...and violence.

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