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Susan Howatch : A Question of Integrity

Little, Brown & Company, Great Britain, 1997

ISBN 0316641375

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. CF2 - A first UK edition hardcover book SIGNED by author on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has some wrinkling, chipping and crease on the edges and corners, scattered foxing and scratches, light tanning and shelf wear. Book has some bumped corners and dog-eared pages, foxing and scribbled line on the page edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. The power of love.. or the love of power. 9.5"x6.5", 615 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Susan Howatch is a British author. Her writing career has been distinguished by family saga-type novels which describe the lives of related characters for long periods of time. Her later books have also become known for their religious and philosophical themes. Her first novel was The Dark Shore (1965). She published several other "gothic" novels before she published the first of her family sagas Penmarric (1971), which details the fortunes and disputes of the Penmar family in Cornwall during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An important theme of the story is how the mansion of Penmarric becomes controlled by various branches of the family. The family fortune was made in the Cornish tin mining industry, which is discussed throughout each one of the six parts, each with a different character as narrator. As is made clear by the chapter headings, the fortunes of the family closely parallel the Plantagenet family, including Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, with the mansion representing the throne. It was adapted into a tv-series with the same name in 1979. Howatch wrote the novel at her kitchen table in New Jersey. Publisher Michael Korda wrote, "It is a frequently stated basic belief of book publishing that somewhere in the country at any given moment some unknown woman is writing a major best-seller (usually referred to as 'the next Gone with the Wind') at her kitchen table while looking after her baby, but this was the first time I had experienced the phenomenom in real life. Susan Howatch had written her massive novel with one hand on the cradle and the other doing the typing, but, like most authors who succeed, she had never doubted that her book would be a bestseller." Korda asserted that, while reading the drafts, he noticed similarities to the Plantagenets and asked Howatch if that was the case. She replied that Shakespeare had borrowed most of his plots from other sources and asked Korda if he thought anyone would notice, he said. Howatch followed a similar theme in her vast saga, The Wheel of Fortune, where the story of the Godwin family of Oxmoon in Gower, South Wales, is in fact a re-creation in a modern form of the story of the Plantagenet family of Edward III of England, the modern characters being created from those of his eldest son Edward of Woodstock (The Black Prince) and his wife Joan of Kent, John of Gaunt and his mistress, later wife, Katherine Swynford, Richard II (son of Edward of Woodstock), Henry IV (son of John of Gaunt) and Henry IV's eldest son King Henry V. Again the mansion represents the throne. She also wrote three other family sagas, Cashelmara, which focuses on the family of Edward I (Edward de Salis), his son, Edward II (Patrick de Salis) and others; and The Rich Are Different followed by its sequel, The Sins of the Fathers, both of which combine to tell the story, in America' s financial industry, of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, and Octavian. The St. Benet's trilogy takes place in the London of the 1980s and 1990s. Again, it illustrates the changes which took place in the Anglican Church in those years and brings back many of the characters in the Starbridge series. However, while the Church is still at the heart of the books, there is an increased emphasis on characters who are not members of the clergy. Like the six preceding books, each in the trilogy is written in the first person by a different narrator. A Question of Integrity (given the title The Wonder Worker in the United States), picks up the story of Nicholas Darrow twenty years after the last of the Starbridge novels. Nick is now rector of a church in the City of London, where he runs a centre for the ministry of healing. His own life is greatly affected by events taking place at the centre, especially after he meets Alice Fletcher, an insecure new worker there, and is forced to reassess his beliefs and commitments as a result. The High Flyer narrates the story of a City lawyer, Carter Graham, who "has it all". Her outwardly successful life, complete with highly compensated career and suitable marriage, undergoes profound changes after harrowing events smacking of the occult begin to occur, which reveal that things are not what they seem. Finally, The Heartbreaker follows the life of Gavin Blake, a charismatic prostitute specializing in powerful, influential male clients, who finds himself at the centre of a criminal empire and must fight to save his life. Meanwhile, both Graham and Darrow must deal with their own weaknesses in trying to help Gavin.. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hard Cover. Jacket: Very Good

First UK Edition
Signed by Author