Cathedral of the Sea


Book Description

An unforgettable fresco of a golden age in fourteenth-century Barcelona, Cathedral of the Sea is a thrilling historical novel of friendship and revenge, plague and hope, love and war. Arnau Estanyol arrives in Barcelona to find a city dominated by the construction of the city’s great pride—the cathedral of Santa Maria del Mar—and by its shame, the deadly Inquisition. As a young man, Arnau joins the powerful guild of stoneworkers and helps to build the church with his own hands, while his best friend and adopted brother Joanet studies to become a priest. With time, Arnau prospers and falls secretly in love with a forbidden woman. But when he is betrayed and hauled before the Inquisitor, he finds himself face-to-face with Joanet. Will he lose his life just as his beloved Cathedral of the Sea is finally completed, or will his brother save him? MORE THAN TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE!




The Pillars of the Earth


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The “extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece” (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett’s already phenomenal career—and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended. “Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal. 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. A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.




Cathedrals of the World Coloring Book


Book Description

This fascinating volume invites colorists of all ages to color detailed illustrations of 40 great churches from around the world. Includes St. Paul's (London), Chartres (France), Notre Dame (Paris), Cologne (Germany), St. Peter's (Rome), St. Basil's (Moscow), St. Patrick's (New York), the Washington Cathedral, and more.




The Hand of Fatima


Book Description

Snared between two cultures and two loves, one man is forced to choose... 1564, the Kingdom of Granada. After years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims. Amidst the conflict is young Hernando, the son of an Arab woman and the Christian priest who raped her. He is despised and regularly beaten by his own step-father for his 'tainted' heritage. Fuelled with the love of the beautiful Fatima, Hernando hatches a plan to unite the two warring faiths - and the two halves of his identity...




The Child from the Sea


Book Description

Against the pomp and pageantry of turbulent seventeenth century England, Elizabeth Goudge weaves the poignant tale of Lucy Walter, the proud and beautiful secret wife of Charles II. From her early childhood in a castle by the sea in Wales and the joys and pangs of childhood, to her tragic estrangement from the king and her death in Paris at the age of twenty-eight, Lucy Walter lived to the full a life of intense joy and equally intense drama. Miss Goudge portrays brilliantly a young love almost too ecstatic to bear. Equally moving is her characterization of Lucy—a spirited woman caught up in the cataclysmic wars and disruptive revolution of a tumultuous era. From London at the time of the Great Fire, to Paris when British royalty fled to the sanctuary of the Louvre, to Brussels and The Hague and a rich panoramic background—a master storyteller traces the life and loves of an extraordinary woman. The Child from the Sea is a superbly colorful and romantic historical novel alive with brilliant cameos and infused with a spiritual essence rare in our times.




The Royal Physician's Visit


Book Description

A handsome doctor stirs up scandal in the eighteenth-century Danish royal court in this “extraordinarily elegant and gorgeous novel” (Los Angeles Times). The Royal Physician's Visit magnificently recasts the dramatic era of Danish history when Johann Friedrich Struensee—court physician to mad young King Christian—stepped through an aperture in history and became the holder of absolute power in Denmark. His is a gripping tale of power, sex, love, and the life of the mind, and it is superbly rendered here by Sweden’s most acclaimed writer. A charismatic German doctor and brilliant intellectual, Struensee used his influence to introduce hundreds of reforms in Denmark in the 1760s and had a tender and erotic affair with Queen Caroline Mathilde, who was unsatisfied by her unstable, childlike husband. And yet, his ambitions ultimately led to tragedy. This novel, perfect for book clubs, is a compelling look into the intrigues of an Enlightenment court and the life of a singular man. “An enthralling fable of the temptations of power—and a surprisingly poignant love story,” —Time “Realized with a vividness and subtlety that place the book in the front ranks of contemporary literary fiction,” —The New York Times Book Review “The Swedish novelist’s method is to begin 10 years after Struensee’s fall, then retrace the “Struensee era,” as it came to be called, by probing the characters of four principal players—Christian, Guldberg, Struensee, and Queen Caroline Mathilde—each of whose perspectives, even the king’s, he makes intelligible and occasionally even sympathetic. A towering achievement,” —Booklist




Turing's Cathedral


Book Description

Documents the innovations of a group of eccentric geniuses who developed computer code in the mid-20th century as part of mathematician Alan Turin's theoretical universal machine idea, exploring how their ideas led to such developments as digital television, modern genetics and the hydrogen bomb.




Cathedral


Book Description

This richly illustrated book shows the intricate step-by-step process of an imaginary cathedral's growth.




Toilers of the Sea


Book Description




The Cathedral of Mist


Book Description

A collection of ethereal stories from the last of the great Francophone Belgian fantasists First published in French in 1983, The Cathedral of Mist is a collection of stories from the last of the great Francophone Belgian fantasists: distilled tales of distant journeys, buried memories and impossible architecture. Described here are the emotionally disturbed architectural plan for a palace of emptiness; the experience of snowfall in a bed in the middle of a Finnish forest; the memory chambers that fuel the marvelous futility of the endeavor to write; the beautiful woodland church, built of warm air currents and fog, scattering in storms and taking renewed shape at dusk, that gives this book its title. The Cathedral of Mist offers the sort of ethereal narratives that might have come from the pen of a sorrowful, distinctly Belgian Italo Calvino. It is accompanied by two meditative essays on reading and writing that fall in the tradition of Marcel Proust and Julien Gracq. Paul Willems (1912-97) published his first novel, Everything Here Is Real, in 1941. Three more novels and, toward the end of his life, two collections of short stories bracketed his career as a playwright.