by Simon Raven
Doctors Wear Scarlet
All his life, Richard Fountain has known only success. He is handsome, with an enviable record for school, army and university. A future career as a talented archaeologist seems assured. That is, until he travels to Greece and meets Chriseis. Chriseis is beautiful, mesmerising and mysterious – also evil. A spellbound Richard is lured into her dark world of vice, vampirism and ritual, high up in the Cretan mountains. When his rescuers finally reach him, he has changed beyond all recognition and is seemingly destined for a tragic end. The final act at a double funeral provides a tumultuous climax to a shocking story.
Face of the Waters
This is the second volume of Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt series. Marius Stern, the wayward son of Gregory Stern, has survived earlier escapades and is safely back at prep school – assisted by his father’s generous contribution to the school’s new shooting range. Fielding Gray and Jeremy Morrison are returning home via Venice, where they encounter the friar, Piero, an ex-male whore and a figure from a shared but distant past. Back in England, at the Wiltshire family home, Lord Canteloupe is restless. He finds his calm disturbed by events: the arrival of Piero; Jeremy’s father’s threat to saddle his son with the responsibility of the family estate; and the dramatic resistance of Gregory Stern to attempted blackmail.
The Fortunes of Fingel
Life with Fingel is never predictable or dull, as we discover in this collection of hilarious short stories about army life. Simon Raven, who was a regimental officer with the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry, writes with experience and humour. He reports on the adventures and misadventures, deeds and misdeeds, fortunes and misfortunes of the regimental rascal Fingel. We learn of Fingel’s progress from subaltern to insubstantive colonel. Although Fingel earns no glory, no awards, no commendations he has charm enough to con the brigadiers and colonels’ wives and to implicate his fellow soldiers in his schemes.
In the Image of God
The sixth in the First Born of Egypt series sees Raisley Conyngham, Classics teacher at Lancaster College exert a powerful influence over Marius Stern. His young pupil however is no defenceless victim. Marius has a ruthless streak and an ability to sidestep tests and traps that are laid for him. Which is just as well because everybody is after something from him…
An Inch of Fortune
‘Presuming even your capacity for borrowing money without qualm or security has by now lost much of its edge, it only remains that you should make some.’ The words of the Bursar ringing in his ears, Esme Sangrail Sa Foy is pushed into working in his summer holidays as a way of settling his college’s bills. Hired by the Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather, as holiday tutor to her adopted son Terence, Esme’s brief is unusual. Not expected to teach Terence anything, he is there to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps Terence’s psychiatrist Doctor MacTavish is a sign that nothing in the Fairweather household is what it seems. As the summer develops and Esme and Terence leave London for Suffolk and finally Biarritz, Esme makes his discoveries.
The Morning Star
This first volume in Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt saga opens with the christening of the Marquess Canteloupe’s son and heir, Sarum of Old Sarum. The ceremony, attended by the godparents and the real father, Fielding Gray, is not without drama. The christening introduces a bizarre cast of eccentric characters and complicated relationships. In Morning Star we meet the brilliant but troublesome teenager Marius Stern. Marius’ increasingly outrageous behaviour has him constantly on the verge of expulsion from prep school. When his parents are kidnapped, apparently without reason, events take a turn for the worse.
New Seed for Old
The fourth in the First Born of Egypt series has Lord Canteloupe wanting a satisfactory heir so that his dynasty may continue. Unfortunately, Lord Canteloupe is impotent and his existing heir, little Tully Sarum, is not of sound mind. His wife Theodosia is prepared to do her duty when a suitable partner is found. Finding the man and the occasion proves somewhat tricky however, and it is not until Lord Canteloupe goes up to Lord’s for the first match of the season that progress is made.
The Roses of Picardie
A string of long-lost and cursed rubies gives the title to this highly imaginative tale by Simon Raven, author of the First Born of Egypt saga. Jacquiz Helmut and Balbo Blakeney, among other eccentric characters, pursue the jewels across four countries and eight centuries. Horror, intrigue and high comedy shape the story as it races towards an unforgettable climax.
September Castle
Basic human desires merge with the occult in a complex and erotic tale of a hunt across Europe. Ptolemaeos Tunne is determined to discover a hoard of valuable buried treasure. His only clue is a bizarre medieval legend about a possessed Greek princess with a bad reputation. What he doesn’t know is that his sixteen-year-old mistress Jo-Jo has unwittingly betrayed him to some very dangerous enemies.
Shadows On The Grass
Simon Raven’s wonderfully funny cricketing memoir covers a golden age from the early 1930s to the 1950s. With his unerring eye for observation, Raven hilariously recounts matches played at Charterhouse, Cambridge and cricket grounds as far afield as Bangalore, Kenya and Corfu. The autobiography is peopled with the author’s famous and infamous friends and partners in crime and littered with memorable anecdotes.
Troubadour
‘Where the twins had been a body lay in long, soft robes, and by its head a discarded lute. The head was uncovered and split into halves from the apex of the skull to the bridge of the nose…’ The question is whether this macabre scene is only theatre or whether it is it a sign of ill omen. In this, the concluding book in Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt saga, the fate of Raisley Conyngham, Marius Stern and other characters is decided.
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