Books with author Charles Wills

A re-telling of the classic Dickens story "A Tale of Two Cities", this time with vampires, some interesting plot twists and a "Wow!" ending. Excerpt:Monsieur the Marquis was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France. Since the accession of the new king in 1774, Monsieur the Marquis had adopted the disagreeable habit (which he would never have done during the reign of the old King who had executed Monsieur’s brother for such improprieties) of frequently changing himself into a huge beast, with formidable teeth and fur which had a reddish tinge. He ate women and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he had been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He had no regard for the new King or the new King’s law prohibiting indiscriminate feeding on men, and tore out his victims throats with gusto before drinking their blood and devouring their bodies; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the cook. Yes. It took four men, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lackey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favored napkin; a fourth poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens.

The Place of the Lion is a fantasy novel written by Charles Williams. The book was first published in 1931 by Victor Gollancz.Platonic archetypes begin to manifest themselves outside a small Hertfordshire town, wreaking havoc and drawing to the surface the spiritual strengths and flaws of individual characters. Their focus is the home of Mr Berringer, the leader of a group interested in magical symbolism who falls into a coma after contact with the first archetype unloosed, the lion of the title. Other powers follow this one and cut off the town from the rest of the world that they will inevitably absorb and reshape. Among those overcome and destroyed by the raw powers they encounter are two members of the group, Mr Foster and Miss Wilmot, whose motivation is ultimately selfish. A chance visitor to the group, the academic author Damaris Tighe, narrowly escapes the same fate but is saved at the last moment by her cousin and fiancé, Anthony Durrant. She then sets out to locate Anthony’s friend, Quentin Sabot, who had been with Anthony when the lion first appeared and has now fled into the countryside, overcome with terror.Meanwhile, with the help of another group member, Mr Richardson, who also has the inner strength to withstand the angelical archetypes, Anthony is enabled to understand the process that has been unleashed by Berringer. Together they plan to counter it and reverse the threat. Its next phase has already started and some of the town’s buildings begin to collapse as Berringer’s house is swallowed in a column of unquenchable flame. Armed with the secret names of the archetypes from a grimoire, Anthony summons them back to their point of focus while Richardson neutralizes the fire by walking into it. (wikipedia.org)

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