Books with author ANYA SETON

A novel of England during the Viking era, from an author who “has vividly and colorfully portrayed life during the tumultuous Dark Ages” (Historical Novels Review). The last quarter of the tenth century was a time of conflict and exploration—while the Anglo-Saxons fought against the Vikings, Norsemen voyaged into the unknown looking for new lands to pillage, and so discovered America. Prince Rumon of France, descendant of Charlemagne and King Alfred, was a searcher. He had visions of the Islands of the Blessed, perhaps King Arthur’s Avalon, “where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.” Merewyn grew up in savage Cornwall—a lonely girl, sustained by stubborn courage and belief in her descent from great King Arthur. Chance—or fate—in the form of a shipwreck off the Cornish coast brought Rumon and Merewyn together, and from that hour their lives were intertwined. Bound by his vow to her dying mother, Rumon brings Merewyn safely to England, keeping hidden the shameful secret of her birth. He considers his responsibility ended. At court, he is dazzled by the beautiful Queen Alfrida—but when a murderous truth is revealed, he turns to Merewyn, only to discover that he may have lost her. And he will journey across the Atlantic to find her again . . . From the beloved bestselling author of Katherine and Dragonwyck, this is a romantic tale of history and adventure “characterized by an authentic sense of time” (The New York Times Book Review).

“A glorious example of romance in its most classic literary sense: exhilarating, exuberant, and rich with the jeweled tones of England in the 1300s.” —Austin ChronicleKatherine is an epic novel of a love affair that changed history—that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Set in the vibrant fourteenth century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who rule despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already-married Katherine. Their affair persists through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. Anya Seton's vivid rendering of the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster makes Katherine an unmistakable classic.

Anya Seton, author of the bestselling Katherine and The Winthrop Woman, was at her peak when she penned those two novels in the mid-1950s. But during that same period, she also wrote a little-known shorter novel entitled The Mistletoe and Sword. Here she turned her peerless talents as a storyteller and researcher to the adventure and romance of Roman Britain circa A.D. 60. Quintus Tullius, the young standard bearer with the Ninth Roman Legion, has come to Britain as part of the empire’s efforts to pacify the rebellious tribes there. But he is haunted by his quest for the bones of his grandfather, who died seventeen years before in “the place of the golden tree and the stony circle.” As the druids who haunt Stonehenge lead him through the mythic land, he falls in love with the beautiful and mysterious Regan. But this girl is the foster daughter of Boadicea, the warrior queen of the Icenians and instigator of the historic, bloody rebellion of the British tribes against Rome. With its suspenseful battle scenes and its mysticism and romance, The Mistletoe and Sword is an absorbing tale that makes this obscure era of history excitingly contemporary.

Anya Seton, whose many novels won her world-wide acclaim, wrote, for her last book, a fast-paced novel that explores the subconscious mind of a young girl whose troubled dream life parallels that of another girl who lived over 200 years earlier. A shy high school senior, Amy Delatour is a misfit in the well-to-do community in which she lives with her widowed mother and French-Canadian grandfather. Amy’s passion is for the 19th-century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom she sees as a romantic and tragic figure. Her immersion in the poet’s life and writings is partly fueled by her grandfather’s tales of his ancestors and of the injustice of “le grand dérangement,” when the French Acadians were expelled from their home in Nova Scotia in 1775. Amy has steeped herself in the lore of the period, and the efforts of a young English teacher to draw her out through hypnosis brings unexpected results. What begins as an unauthorized attempt to free Amy from her frightening visions of the past ends with intimations of reincarnation or, at least, genetic memory. Anya Seton’s many fans will not be disappointed in this closely researched and deeply engrossing novel--nor will readers new to her finely crafted historical fiction.