Penmarric

From the acclaimed author of Cashelmara: the “grippingly readable” New York Times–bestselling saga of a noble English family torn apart (The Sunday Times). Overlooking the bleak cliffs of Cornwall is Penmarric, the ancestral home of Mark Castallack. The stunning gothic manor is the picture of English nobility, wealth, and comfort. But as the twentieth century unfolds, those behind Penmarric’s towering walls face nothing short of disaster. As Mark and his children struggle to save their home and their aristocratic way of life, they must engage in a bitter fight against greed, ambition, betrayal, and even murder. Over her forty-year career, Susan Howatch has taken on the Anglican Communion and the British elite, and established herself as the queen of the historical family saga with such bestsellers as The Wheel of Fortune. Now, discover the magnificent, sweeping novel that started her reign and made her an international-bestselling author. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Howatch including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The New York Times–bestselling saga: In nineteenth-century Ireland, a titled English family keeps an estate in an era of famine and violent conflict. When Edward de Salis travels to America after the death of his first wife, he is astonished to find himself falling in love with Marguerite, a young woman many years his junior. Full of hope for the future, he returns to his Irish estate, Cashelmara, but in nineteenth-century Ireland—a country racked by poverty and famine—his family eventually becomes trapped in a sinister spiral of violence that Edward could never have foreseen. Cashelmara follows the fortunes of three generations as they struggle to survive both the tragedies of history and their own chaotic lives. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Howatch including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

An “emotion-packed” New York Times–bestselling saga by the author of Cashelmara, set on a Welsh family estate in the early twentieth century (San Francisco Chronicle). Tucked in the hills of South Wales is Oxmoon, the ancestral estate of the Godwin family. In the summers before 1914, music streams through the family home as the Godwins, at the height of their prosperity, dance in the ballroom with their guests. But despite the remarkable talents of heir-apparent Robert Godwin, the fates have a rough, tough ride planned for him and those he loves. Fortunes shift during two world wars, disastrous love affairs leave the family battered, and finally jealousy threatens to destroy Oxmoon and all it symbolizes. Based on a true story that has been updated to modern times, The Wheel of Fortune is a timeless tale of love, hatred, revenge, redemption, and forgiveness. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Howatch including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

"Prime du Maurier. . . . She holds her characters close to reality; the past she creates is valid, and her skill in finessing the time shifts is enough to make one want to try a little of the brew."—New York Times

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.

The New York Times bestselling novel about a powerful Wall Street family in the 1920s and the illicit affair that threatens their empire. During the Roaring Twenties, Paul Van Zale is the undisputed king of the financial industry, an influential man of great wealth, unparalleled power, enormous ego, and insatiable appetites. He’s also exactly what Dinah Slade is looking for: a millionaire susceptible to seduction who can rescue her endangered ancestral estate and make her dream of creating her own business empire come true. All it takes is one look at the intoxicating young Englishwoman—“delivered” in secret to his London office—and all thoughts of his wife and other mistresses are instantly banished from Van Zale’s mind. But their ensuing love affair has repercussions that will shake the foundations of the banking tycoon’s Wall Street firm, especially when his dynamic, impulsive right-hand man also falls victim to Dinah’s vibrant sensuality. Perhaps graver still is her effect on Van Zale’s family, among whom greed, rage, and jealousy are prime motivating factors. And as the boom of the twenties gives way to the despair of the Great Depression, everything threatens to come tumbling down in an avalanche of treachery and murder. Inspired by the love triangle involving Caesar, Cleopatra, and Mark Antony, the author of Sins of the Fathers and The Wheel of Fortune—known for writing “impressive fiction imbued with moral questions”—presents an unforgettable saga of an American dynasty in the tumultuous years between the two world wars (Publishers Weekly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Howatch including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Named a Best New Book of 2021 (so far) by Real Simple Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Lit Hub and Bustle A gripping, multilayered debut in the tradition of Tana French and Donna Tartt about four friends, an empty manor, and a night that will follow them for the rest of their lives It's the summer of 1996 and school's out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet David—charming and unreliable, he seems to have appeared out of nowhere. David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates the dynamics of their lifelong friendship. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen fifty years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game—half treasure hunt, half friendly deception—begins. But the Game becomes much bigger than the necklace, growing to encompass years of secrets, lies, and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal. Meticulously plotted and gorgeously written, Before the Ruins is a page-turner of the highest order about the sealed-off places in our pasts and the parts of ourselves waiting to be retrieved from them.

Susan Howatch's global bestsellers have appeared regularly since the 1970s, but a radical shift in her subject matter in the 1980s and especially the 1990s made reviewers and then academics adjust their glasses and stare hard at her pages. Howatch began to take her loyal following of gothic and family-saga readers into unexpected psychological and theological depths, while taking to an extreme, with a serious-novel format, the experiments begun in her family sagas. She also introduced to her readers a character only half-alive in Trollope, the Anglican Church.