Land of Marvels

Barry Unsworth

Hutchinson

Quality of Mercy

The Quality of Mercy opens in the spring of 1767, in the immediate aftermath of the events in Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger. It follows the fortunes of two central characters from that book: Sullivan, an Irish fiddler, and Erasmus Kemp, the son of a disgraced Liverpool slave-ship owner who hanged himself. To avenge his father's death, Erasmus Kemp has had the rebellious sailors of his father's ship, including Sullivan, brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. But as the novel opens, a blithe Sullivan has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing and scamming as he goes. His destination is the colliery village where his dead shipmate, Billy Blair, lived: he has pledged to tell the family how Billy met his end. In this village, Thorpe in the East Durham coalfields, live Billy's sister Nan and her miner husband, James Bordon. Their three sons are all destined to follow their father down the pit. The youngest, only 7, is enjoying his last summer above ground. The terrible conditions in which mineworkers laboured are vividly evoked, and Bordon has dreams of escaping the mine with his family. Meanwhile in London a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, gets involved in a second case relating to the lost ship. Erasmus Kemp is claiming financial compensation for the cargo of sick slaves who were thrown overboard to drown, and Ashton is representing the insurers who dispute his claim. Ashton triumphs in court, but not before his beautiful sister, Jane, has encountered Erasmus Kemp and found herself powerfully attracted to him despite their polarised views on slavery. She discovers that Kemp wants to spend some of his sugar and slavery fortune on Britain's new industries: coal-mining and steel. A landowner father of a friend of Jane's tips him off about Lord Spenton's mines, for sale in East Durham, and Kemp sees the business opportunity he has been waiting for. Thus he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for ...

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Random House Export

<p>As the child of an absent mother and a disapproving father, Charles Cleasby found comfort in solitary games of chess. Many years later, in the house where he grew up and now lives alone, he re-enacts the naval battles of his hero Horatio Nelson, moving model ships as carefully as he once did chess pieces. Having long been convinced of a link between 'this great man's life and mine', Charles, surrounded by his collection of Nelson memorabilia, begins work on his biography of the Admiral and is unsettled to find that Nelson may not be the perfect leader he's always imagined. To doubt his hero's integrity feels like a terrible betrayal, but if Nelson is not the man Charles thought he was, what does that mean for him?</p>

Losing Nelson

Contemporary

WINDMILL

On the Agean island where Pascali the spy is filing his last report to his Turkish paymasters, the old Europe can already be heard dropping apart. Why Pascali, exposed and in deadly danger, should choose this moment to become involved with a mysterious Englishman is part of this, his testament.

Pascali's Island

Gardners Books

Benson, who teaches creative writing, meets an old wartime comrade and memories of the war come flooding back. Somehow this sparks off a new awareness of his present life in Liverpool, in Thatcher's Britain. The author won the 1992 Booker Prize for "Sacred Hunger".

Sugar and Rum

Penguin??Books

Morality Play

<p>It is the late fourteenth century, a dangerous time beset by war and plague. Nicholas Barber, a young and wayward cleric, stumbles across a group of travelling players and compounds his sins by joining them. Yet the town where they perform reveals another drama: a young woman is to be hanged for the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. What better way to increase their takings than to make a new play, to enact the murder of Thomas Wells? But as the actors rehearse, they discover that the truth about the boy's death has yet to be revealed.</p>

After Hannibal

Penguin Books, Ltd.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barry Unsworth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barry Unsworth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barry Unsworth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Land of Marvels

Quality of Mercy

Quality of Mercy

Losing Nelson

Pascali's Island

Sugar and Rum

Morality Play

After Hannibal

Morality Play

Losing Nelson