Books with author Robie H Harris

Ancient Rome: While Mount Vesuvius silently bubbles and smokes, citizens of the world's sole superpower relax in their luxurious villas while its navy lies peacefully at anchor in the Bay of Naples. But engineer Marius Primus, newly in charge of the Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter million people around the bay, is worried. Springs are failing for the first time in generations, and something is wrong with the Augusta's main line on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. As he heads to repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry, Marius discovers forces that even the Roman Empire can't control. Told through the eyes of an engineer and a scientist, POMPEII offers an entirely original perspective on this terrible catastrophe.

Harris Provides an awe-inspiring tour of one of the monumental engineering triumpths on which the Roman empire was based... What makes this nove all but putdownable... is the bravura fictional flair that crackles through it. brilliantly evoking the doomed society pursuing its ambitions and schemes in the shadow of a mountain that nobody knew was a volcano. Harris, as Vesuvirus explodes, gives full vent to his genius for thrilling narrative. fast-paced twists and turns alternate with nightmarish slow-motion scenes (desperate figures struggling to wade thigh-deep through slurries of pumice towards what they hope will be safety). Harris's unleashing of the furnace ferocities of the eruptions terminal phase turns his books closing sequences into pulse-rate speeding masterpieces of suffocating suspense and searing action.