Showing results by author "Ken Follett" in All Categories

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.

Christmas 1558, and young Ned Willard returns home to Kingsbridge to find his world has changed. The ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn by religious hatred. Europe is in turmoil as high principles clash bloodily with friendship, loyalty and love, and Ned soon finds himself on the opposite side from the girl he longs to marry, Margery Fitzgerald. Then Elizabeth Tudor becomes queen and all of Europe turns against England.

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.

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.

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.

Judy's boss has a grudge against her, so he gives her a dumb assignment: to investigate an anonymous threat from a group that claims that it can trigger earthquakes. Judy's research leads her to maverick seismologist Michael Quercus, who tells her it is possible for an earthquake to be caused deliberately. And when a tremor in a remote desert area shows signs of being machine-generated, Judy knows he was right. But who is responsible for the earthquake? Judy must find out before another tremor strikes. 

Five linked families live out their destinies as the world is shaken by tyranny and war in the mid-20th century. 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

In 1866 tragedy strikes at the exclusive Windfield School when a mysterious accident takes the life of a student. Among the student's circle of friends are Hugh Pilaster; Hugh's older cousin Edward, dissolute heir to the Pilaster banking fortune; and Micky Miranda, the handsome son of a brutal South American oligarchy. The death and its aftermath begin the spiraling circle of treachery that will span three decades and entwine many lives.

Born of his admiration for an an iconic cathedral and how it has influenced his own work, this short book about Notre Dame’s history is Ken Follett’s contribution to the fund created to help rebuild it, a fund that will increase with every sale that is made of the book. Ken Follett will be donating 100 percent of his royalties to the charity La Fondation du Patrimoine.  

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....

Three days that could change the world's political landscape....A man wakes up to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station, his mind stripped bare of all recollection. He has no idea how he got there. He does not even know his own name. Convinced he is a drunken down and out, it isn't until a newspaper report about a satellite launch catches his eye that he begins to suspect all is not what it seems....

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.

He is known to the Germans as 'Sphinx', to others as Alex Wolff, a European businessman. He arrives suddenly in Cairo from out of the desert, armed with a radio set, a lethal blade and a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca - a ruthless man with a burning, relentless conviction that he will win at all costs. The stakes are high, for the survival of the British campaign in North Africa is in the balance. Only Major William Vandam, an intelligence officer, and the beautiful courtesan Elene can put an end to Wolff's brilliant clandestine reports of British troop movements and strategic plans.

Modigliani. Unarguably one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Modigliani's women. Those elongated, haunting figures, as eternally provocative as the Mona Lisa. And Modigliani's missing masterpiece. A priceless lost treasure - or a chillingly dangerous game? In Ken Follett's gripping thriller The Modigliani Scandal, up and coming artist Peter Usher has still to exhibit anywhere, still to make even the most modest mark on the London art scene. 

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.

In 1976, Albert Spaggiari engineered the European crime of the century - a bank heist in Nice accomplished "without guns, without violence, without hate." Spaggiari and his gang of 20 men dug a 25-foot tunnel from the city's sewer system into the bank and lifted about $10 million in gold, jewelry, gems, and cash. Tracked down and captured, Spaggiari escaped from the French police by jumping out a window and onto the back of a motorcycle.