Roland Vernon

Piet Steyn and Granville St Clair happen both to be out walking at dawn on a country lane when they unintentionally become joint witnesses of a domestic tragedy. There is one aspect of what they see that morning which they feel compelled to keep secret...

New York, 1926. Rocco Campobello, the great tenor - one of the most revered entertainers in the world - collapses on stage. He emerges from this brush with death a changed man: a fallen, but enlightened colossus, Casting off the mantle of celebrity, he embarks on a journey into his dark and sinister past which takes him back to his impoverished early life and to the city that made him: Naples. There he is forced to confront the truth about himself, his ruthlessness and treachery and to address ghosts from his past that he now seeks to lay to rest.Magnificent, flamboyant, yet impoverished and decaying, Naples is a city caught in the throes of change. The old ways, embodied in the activities of the camorra, the Italian mafia, are fighting to survive in the face of the brutal new poltics of Mussolini and his Fascists. Don Graziani, head of one of the citys most respected - and fear - families, has much to lose if the great tenors career falls apart. In league with Campobellos near-estranged wife, he conspires to re-launch the great voice in magnificent fashion. When persuasion fails, he reveals his true colours and resorts to brutal blackmail as the means to force the tenor to go along with their plans and return to the stage. Rediscovering his own integrity, Campobello is compelled to hatch a dangerous counter plot of his own in order to outmanoeuvre them all and reclaim his life as his own...The Masters Voice weaves a rich and evocative path through a world of celebrity glamour, stinging violence, musical supremacy and scarred psyches.

The unexpected suicide of an apparently happy family man; a woman held captive for three years in a forgotten underground bunker; a middle aged clergyman at a crisis point in his life, drawn into an uncomfortable relationship with a teenaged girl. Against the backcloth of these interwoven tales comes the story of two very different men who meet accidentally and are dramatically thrown together.Piet Steyn and Granville St Clair happen both to be out walking at dawn on a country lane when they unintentionally become joint witnesses of a domestic tragedy. There is one aspect of what they see that morning which they feel compelled to keep secret - a decision that will later have appalling repercussions for them both. As the layers of their private lives begin to peel away, they find themselves unwillingly bound together in a conspiracy with deadly consequences. The Good Wifes Castle is a tense thriller that explores a clash of human evil and goodness, of despair, murderous obsession and twisted spirituality, all of which co-exist beneath the veneer of seemingly respectable people in a quiet rural community.

Greece, 1869Godwin Tudor, a young English photographer recently arrived in Athens, is intrigued by the mysterious and maverick British landowner Edgar Brooke, whose vast estate dominates the island of Pyroxenia.Whilst visiting Brookes remote home, Godwin is enchanted by the breathtaking landscape and his hosts capricious young daughter Lydia. But all is not as it seems as inadvertently Godwin finds himself drawn into the centre of a dangerous political conspiracy. As events spiral out of control, Godwin does his best to play the diplomat in a terrifying international incident but the consequences prove more devastating than he can imagine. A maelstrom of romance, political intrigue and life-or-death drama, A Dark Enchantment marks the debut of an exciting new storyteller.

Grecia en 1869: Godwin Tudor, un joven fotógrafo inglés deseoso de conocer mundo, viaja a Atenas y traba amistad con el terrateniente Edgar Brooke, quien le invita a pasar una temporada en su casa. Una vez alli no podra resistirse a los encantos de Lydia, la caprichosa hija de Edgar. Mientras, Brooke propicia encuentros secretos con politicos y empresarios poderosos que iran armando una peligrosa trama de extorsion. Con una ambientacion sugerente y extraordinaria, en la Grecia del siglo xix, esta novela presenta a unos personajes inolvidables envueltos en una historia de amor morbosa y tragica (la que protagonizan Tudor y la adolescente Lydia) y en una maquinacion politica que pone en marcha el ambicioso Edgar Brooke. Por su fuerza y capacidad de evocacion de un mundo exotico y de unos personajes sometidos a las pasiones puede recordar a Posesion, de A. S. Byatt, El mago, de John Fowles, El cuento numero 13, de Diane Setterfield, a la pelicula El piano.