Showing results for "Ken Follett" in All Categories

Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. Joia, Neen's sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.

The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect - a man divided in his soul...of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame...and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother.

On the day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. They are a thief, a bully, a boy genius, and a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the forest they see two men killed. As adults, their lives will be braided together by ambition, love, greed, and revenge. They will see prosperity and famine, plague and war. One boy will travel the world but come home in the end; the other will be a powerful, corrupt nobleman.

A huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London.

1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert. Unprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart. Now, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people will come to define the struggle of a generation.

A World in Turmoil. 1558, and Europe is in revolt as religious hatred sweeps the continent. Elizabeth Tudor has ascended to the throne but she is not safe in this dangerous new world. There are many who would see her removed, not least Mary Queens of Scots, who lies in wait in Paris. A New Order. Elizabeth determines to set up a new secret service: a group of resourceful spies and courageous agents entrusted to keep her safe and in power. As she searches for those who will make the difference, one man stands out.

A stolen US army drone. A shrinking oasis in the Sahara Desert. A secret stash of deadly chemicals. Each is a threat to the stability of the world but individually are problems that can be overcome. In the diplomatic arena though, everyone will have a different way of dealing with such a threat. And when those in charge disagree and refuse to back down, it will kick off an international chain reaction with potentially catastrophic consequences: a world edging closer to war....

1911, a thirteen-year-old boy, Billy Williams, begins working down the mines as George V is crowned king. The escalating arms race between the empire nations will put not only the king but this young boy in grave danger.

It is just before the outbreak of World War I, and Britain must enlist the aid of Russia. Czar Nicholas' nephew is to visit London for secret naval talks with Lord Walden, who has lived in Russia and has a Russian wife, Lydia. But there are other people who are interested in the arrival of Prince Alexei: the Waldens' only daughter, Charlotte - wilful, idealistic, and with an awakening social conscience; Basil Thompson, head of the Special Branch; and, above all, Feliks Kschessinky, the ruthless Russian anarchist.

Two weeks before D-day, the French Resistance attacks a chateau containing a telephone exchange vital to German communications - but the building is heavily guarded, and the attack fails disastrously. Flick Clairet, a young British secret agent, proposes a daring new plan: she will parachute into France with an all-woman team known as the Jackdaws, and they will penetrate the chateau in disguise. But, unknown to Flick, Rommel has assigned a brilliant, ruthless intelligence colonel, Dieter Franck, to crush the Resistance. And Dieter is on Flick's trail....

As the decisions made in the corridors of power bring the world to the brink of oblivion, five families from across the globe are brought together in an unforgettable tale of passion and conflict during the Cold War. When Rebecca Hoffmann, a teacher in East Germany, finds herself pursued by the secret police, she discovers that she has been living a lie. Her younger brother, Walli, longs to escape across the Berlin Wall to Britain to become part of the burgeoning music scene.

It is 1944 and weeks before D-day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phony armada of ships and planes. Their plan would be ruined if an enemy agent found out...and then The Needle - Hitler’s prize undercover agent, a cold and professional killer - does just that. Hunted by MI5, he leads a murderous trail across Britain to a waiting U-boat. But he hasn't planned for a storm-battered island and the remarkable young woman who lives there.

Scientist Jeannie Ferrami stumbles across a baffling mystery: Steve and Dan appear to be identical twins but were born on different days, to different mothers. One is a law student, the other a convicted murderer. They seem a world apart, but as Jeannie begins to fall in love with Steve, she finds her professional - and personal - future threatened.

Set in the turbulent times of 12th century England where civil war, famine, religious strife, and battles over royal succession tore lives and families apart, The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the building of a magnificent cathedral. Against this richly imagined backdrop, filled with intrigue and treachery, Ken Follett draws the reader irresistibly into a wonderful epic of family drama, violent conflict, and unswerving ambition.

1942. Alex Wolff’s goal is Cairo. Following a relentless trek across the scorching Sahara, he arrives in the city with a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a lethal blade and a trail of bodies in his wake. Known to his handlers as the ‘Sphinx’, Wolff is a Nazi spy with a brutal desire to succeed.

Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. Into this turmoil step her mother’s formidable friend and former British MP, Ethel Leckwith, and her student son, Lloyd, who soon learns for himself the brutal reality of Nazism. He also encounters a group of Germans resolved to oppose Hitler - but are they willing to go so far as to betray their country?

Set during the outbreak of the Second World War, Night over Water is a feat of storytelling from the best-selling master of the historical thriller, Ken Follett. On a bright September morning in 1939, two days after Britain has declared war, a group of privileged but desperate people gather in Southampton to board the largest, most luxurious airliner ever built.

Filled with startling twists, Whiteout is the ultimate knife-edge drama from Ken Follett - an international best-selling author who is in a class of his own. As a blizzard whips down from the north on Christmas Eve, several people converge on a remote family house. Stanley Oxenford, director of a pharmaceutical research company, has everything riding on a drug he is developing to fight a lethal virus.

As the decisions made in the corridors of power bring the world to the brink of oblivion, five families from across the globe are brought together in an unforgettable tale of passion and conflict during the Cold War. When Rebecca Hoffmann, a teacher in East Germany, finds herself pursued by the secret police, she discovers that she has been living a lie. Her younger brother, Walli, longs to escape across the Berlin Wall to Britain to become part of the burgeoning music scene.

It is June 1941 and Denmark is under German occupation. On the rocky coast of Denmark, two brothers, Harald and Arne Olufsen, starkly different in nature, are straining against the rigid confines imposed by their austere, elderly parents and trying to find their own way in life. Meanwhile, a network of MI6 spies is attempting to decipher an encrypted Luftwaffe radio signal which mentions the new Freya-Gerät - a rudimentary form of German radar equipment.