Susan Howatch – författare

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.1968, with the swinging sixties sliding into decadence, finds Nicholas Darrow wrestling with overwhelming personal problems: How can he bring himself to marry his fiancée, Rosalind, when he is unable to avoid promiscuity? How can he become a priest when he finds it so difficult to live as one? And how can he break his dangerous dependence on his father Jon, whose psychic gifts he shares?It is at this crucial moment in his life that Nick becomes involved in the mystery surrounding his friend, Christian Aysgarth. Gradually, he realises that discovering the truth about this enigmatic and complex man will unlock the answers to his own baffling problems. However, his journey through darkness into the light reverses all the old certainties and, in his experiments with the psychic powers, Nick risks even his own life and sanity.

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.Charles Ashworth is privileged, pampered and pleased with himself. As Bishop of Starbridge in 1965 he 'purrs along as effortlessly as a well-tuned Rolls-Royce' while he proclaims his famous 'absolute truths' to a society which he sees – with rage and revulsion – as increasingly immoral and disordered. But then a catastrophe tears his life apart and confronts him with the real absolute truths, truths which so shatter him that he finds himself stripped of his pride and struggling for survival.Grappling with the revelation that he has failed his wife, short-changed one son and distorted the personality of the other, Charles's guilt steadily drives him into the immoral and disordered life he has condemned so violently in others. Fighting against the threat of complete breakdown, he then embarks on a quest to rebuild not only his private life but his professional life, a quest which leads him to a final battle with his old enemy Dean Aysgarth in the shadow of Starbridge Cathedral.

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.Beneath the smooth surface of an Episcopal palace lurks the salacious breath of scandal. Charles Ashworth is sent to untangle the web of self-delusion and corruption only to become embroiled in a strange ménage à trois that threatens to expose the secrets of his own past…In Glittering Images tension and drama combine in a compelling novel of people in high places, of desperate longings and the failure to resist them, of lies and evasions, of tarnished realities behind brilliant glittering images.

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.In 1963, when traditional values are coming under attack, a young woman in her twenties, Venetia Flaxton, becomes disastrously involved with her best friend's father, the powerful, dynamic but ultimately mysterious Dean of Starbridge Cathedral. Yet, as a married man and a senior Churchman, Aysgarth has nothing to offer her but an admiration which spirals out of control into an obsessive love.As Aysgarth begins to take scandalous risks to further their friendship, pressures rise and the dangers multiply. Venetia finds herself trapped in a desperate web of love and lies from which it seems impossible to escape.Witty, compassionate and compelling, Scandalous Risks explores not only the reality of sin and the fantasy of sexual obsession, but the overpowering human need for redemption, love and lasting happiness.

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.

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.Jon Darrow, a man with psychic powers, is a man who has played many parts: a shady faith-healer; a naval chaplain, a passionate husband, an awkward father, an Anglo-Catholic monk.In 1940 Darrow returns to the world he once renounced, but faced with many unforeseen temptations he fails to control his psychic, most glamorous powers. Corruption lies in wait for him, and threatens not only his future as a priest but his happiness with Anne, the young woman he has come to love.

Susan Howatch's dark, epic family saga is a must-read for fans of Winston Graham's Poldark We all want what we cannot have, but when Mark Castallack sees his longed-for inheritance Penmarric, a gothic mansion on the bleak cliffs of Cornwall, and the mysterious, mesmerising Janna, he knows that he will make them his and nothing will stand in his way. Yet when Mark realizes his dreams, Penmarric only brings a legacy of conflict, jealousy, infidelity and betrayal. Spanning the Victorian era to the Second World War, this gripping story of one man and his two feuding families chronicles the tempestuous clashes between warring sons, wives and mistresses, and between a house divided against itself.

There were two subjects which lonely widower Edward de Salis never discussed: his dead wife and his family home in Ireland, 'matchless Cashelmara'. So when he meets Marguerite, a bright young American with whom he can talk freely about both, he is able to love again and takes her back to Ireland as his wife.But Marguerite soon discovers that married life is not what she expected, and that she has married into a troubled family bitterly divided by love and hatred. Cashelmara becomes the curse of three generations as they play out their fates in a spellbinding drama, which moves inexorably towards murder and retribution.

The City of London in the 1990s is a dark, adrenaline-charged square mile deep in recession, where sex is just another commodity and keeping one's integrity is a daily struggle.Gavin Blake is riding high. He's up to his neck in money, sex and sleaze, but he's young, and handsome and he's making a lot of money. Carta Graham wants nothing more than to forget her life as a high-flying lawyer, so she's buried herself in a fund-raising project for the City Church of St Benet's. When she meets Gavin, she thinks the only thing they share is a temporary sexual attraction, but she's wrong. They are about to change each other's lives forever.For Gavin comes to see that in order to survive he must escape from the harrowing world he inhabits. His fight for freedom will be hard and fierce, but Carta, searching for her own freedom from the past, is with him every step of the way...

Robert Godwin's tumultuous ride on the Wheel of Fortune begins with his passion for his sensual cousin Ginevra, as they waltz to 'The Blue Danube' beneath the chandeliers at Oxmoon, his beloved family home in Wales. As Robert discovers, his rational, well-ordered mind will be forever altered by his obsession for Ginevra, and his destiny will be forever linked to Oxmoon by the skeletons which lurk in the family closet...For fifty years, from the sinister summer afternoon of 1913 to the 1960s, the Godwin family are sucked into a maelstrom of passion, disorder, madness and murder. Fortunes rise and fall in this sweeping, compulsive tale, until the Wheel of Fortune finally comes full circle.

Vicky van Zale's fight for survival against the three men who use her as a pawn in their struggles for wealth and power begins when her millionaire father manipulates her into an arranged marriage.Her battle with and ultimate victory over her father, her husband and finally her lover, who all try to use her to further their own ends, is set against a background of boardroom intrigue, brutal ambition and bitter masculine rivalry.This is a companion novel to The Rich Are Different and continues the gripping story of the Van Zale dynasty through two decades of conflict as the sins of the fathers are finally visisted upon the next generation ...

When ambitious, exciting Dinah Slade becomes passionately - and dangerously - involved in the private and public life of American millionaire Paul Van Zale, it is the beginning of a violent battle over his business empire and a ruthless struggle by two women to win his heart.We follow the fortunes of Dinah Slade from the boardrooms of Wall Street across the ocean to the Norfolk Broads, from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression and the Second World War. For two decades she stakes everything on winning the fight, in business and in love - and at any cost ...

The beloved masterpiece from the acclaimed Starbridge series returns in a stunning new edition – expanded, revised and substantially rewritten by the author.In 1940 former naval officer chaplain Jon Darrow is now a monk, his psychic gifts kept in order by a busy and rewarding community life. But suddenly he receives a vision calling him to leave his monastery and embark on a journey which will require all his courage and strength, a journey to seek a new life. Yet how can he be sure his psychic gifts and charismatic qualities – those glamorous powers – won’t corrupt this new life in the moral maelstrom of the Second World War?Darrow almost yearns to believe his vision is a delusion, but adventure is waiting for him beyond the cloister and he must steel himself to face the dark and dangerous world he’s been called to rejoin.Susan Howatch’s Glamorous Powers remains one of the most sophisticated examinations of faith, psychology and the Anglican Church ever written. Part psychological thriller, part spiritual journey, this enhanced edition reveals new layers of meaning in Darrow’s struggle to reconcile his mystical gifts with his all-too-human heart.Whether you’re discovering Jon Darrow’s story for the first time or returning to the world of Starbridge, this definitive edition offers the richest, most complete vision of Howatch’s unforgettable tale of searing self-discovery, passionate love and desperate errors which explode into a quest for forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption.