In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of World War 1, "The Great War", "The War to end all Wars", I'll be featuring series' set during the war. Some may deal with the homefront, the battlefield, and/or the aftermath.
Summary:
Through Anne Perry’s magnificent Victorian novels, millions of readers have enjoyed the pleasures and intrigue of a bygone age. Now, with the debut of an extraordinary new series, this New York Times bestselling author sweeps us into the golden summer of 1914, a time of brief enchantment when English men and women basked in the security of wealth and power, even as the last weeks of their privileged world were swiftly passing. Theirs was a peace that led to war.
On a sunny afternoon in late June, Cambridge professor Joseph Reavley is summoned from a student cricket match to learn that his parents have died in an automobile crash. Joseph’s brother, Matthew, as officer in the Intelligence Service, reveals that their father had been en route to London to turn over to him a mysterious secret document—allegedly with the power to disgrace England forever and destroy the civilized world. A paper so damning that Joseph and Matthew dared mention it only to their restless younger sister. Now it has vanished.
What has happened to this explosive document, if indeed it ever existed? How had it fallen into the hands of their father, a quiet countryman? Not even Matthew, with his Intelligence connections, can answer these questions. And Joseph is soon burdened with a second tragedy: the shocking murder of his most gifted student, beautiful Sebastian Allard, loved and admired by everyone. Or so it appeared.
Meanwhile, England’s seamless peace is cracking—as the distance between the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian anarchist and the death of a brilliant university student by a bullet to the head of grows shorter by the day.
Anne Perry is a sublime master of suspense. In No Graves As Yet, her latest haunting masterpiece, she reminds us that love and hate, cowardice and courage, good and evil are always a part of life, in our own time as well as on the eve of the greatest war the world has ever known.
Shoulder the Sky (#2)
Summary:
In the firmament of great historical novelists, Anne Perry is a star of the greatest magnitude. First there were her acclaimed Victorian mysteries, sparkling with passion and suspense. Now readers have embraced this bestselling new series of World War I novels–which juxtapose the tranquil life of the English countryside with the horrors of war.
By April of 1915, as chaplain Joseph Reavley tends to the soldiers in his care, the nightmare of trench warfare is impartially cutting down England’s youth. On one of his rescue forays into no-man’s-land, Joseph finds the body of an arrogant war correspondent, Eldon Prentice. A nephew of the respected General Owen Cullingford, Prentice was despised for his prying attempts to elicit facts that would turn public opinion against the war. Most troublesome to Joseph, Prentice has been killed not by German fire but, apparently, by one of his own compatriots. What Englishman hated Prentice enough to kill him? Joseph is afraid he may know, and his sister, Judith, who is General Cullingford’s driver and translator, harbors her own fearful suspicions.
Meanwhile, Joseph and Judith’s brother, Matthew, an intelligence officer in London, continues his quiet search for the sinister figure they call the Peacemaker, who, like Eldon Prentice, is trying to undermine the public support for the struggle–and, as the Reavley family has good reason to believe, is in fact at the heart of a fantastic plot to reshape the entire world. An intimate of kings, the Peacemaker kills with impunity, and his dark shadow stretches from the peaceful country lanes of Cambridgeshire to the twin hells of Ypres and Gallipoli.
In this mesmerizing series, Anne Perry has found a subject worthy of her gifts. Illuminating the murderous conflict whose violence still resounds in our consciousness–as well as the souls of men and women who lived it–Shoulder the Sky is a taut, inspiring masterpiece.
Angels in the Gloom (#3)
Summary:
With this latest entry in a bestselling series that evokes all the passion and heroism of history’s most heartbreaking conflict–the war that was meant to end all wars–Anne Perry adds new luster to her worldwide reputation.
Angels in the Gloom is an intense saga of love, hate, obsession, and murder that features an honorable English family–brothers Joseph and Matthew Reavley and their sisters, Judith and Hannah.
In March 1916, Joseph, a chaplain at the front, and Judith, an ambulance driver, are fighting not only the Germans but the bitter cold and the appalling casualties at Ypres. Scarcely less at risk, Matthew, an officer in England’s Secret Intelligence Service, fights the war covertly from London. Only Hannah, living with her children in the family home in tranquil Cambridgeshire, seems safe.
Appearances, however, are deceiving. By the time Joseph returns home to Cambridgeshire, rumors of spies and traitors are rampant. And when the savagely brutalized body of a weapons scientist is discovered in a village byway, the fear that haunts the battlefields settles over the town–along with the shadow of the obsessed ideologue who murdered the Reavleys’ parents on the eve of the war. Once again, this icy, anonymous powerbroker, the Peacemaker, is plotting to kill.
Perry’s kaleidoscopic new novel illuminates an entire world, from the hell of the trenches to the London nightclub where a beautiful Irish spy plies her trade; from the sequestered laboratory where a weapon that can end the war is being perfected to the matchless glory of the English countryside in spring. Steeped in history and radiant with truth, Angels in the Gloom is a masterpiece that warms the heart even as it chills the blood.
At Some Disputed Barricade (#4)
Summary:
Anne Perry’s gift for illuminating the heart’s deepest secrets shines through in her bestselling series of World War I novels. With compelling immediacy, she depicts the struggles of men and women torn by their convictions and challenged by the perils of war.
July 1917. Joseph Reavley, a chaplain, and his sister, Judith, an ambulance driver, are bone-weary as they approach the fourth year of the conflict; the peace of the English countryside seems a world away. On the Western Front, the Battle of Passchendaele has begun, and among the many fatalities from Joseph’s regiment is the trusted commanding officer, who is replaced by a young major whose pompous incompetence virtually guarantees that many good soldiers will die needlessly. But soon he, too, is dead–killed by his own men. Although Joseph would like to turn a blind eye, he knows that he must not. Judith, however, anguished at the prospect of courts-martial and executions for the twelve men arrested for the crime, has no such inhibitions and, risking of her own life, helps all but one of the prisoners to escape.
Back in England, Joseph and Judith’s brother, Matthew, continues his desperate pursuit to unmask the sinister figure known as the Peacemaker–an obsessed genius who has committed murder and treason in an attempt to stop Britain from winning the war. As Matthew trails the Peacemaker, Joseph tracks his comrades through Switzerland and into enemy territory. His search will lead to a reckoning pitting courage and honor against the blind machinery of military justice.
At Some Disputed Barricade is an Anne Perry masterpiece–brilliant, surprising, and unforgettable.
We Shall Not Sleep (#5)
Summary:
Anne Perry’s magnificent Victorian mysteries established her as one of the world’s best known and loved historical novelists. Now, in her vividly imagined World War I novels, Perry’s talents “have taken a quantum leap” (The Star-Ledger), and so has the number of her devoted readers. We Shall Not Sleep, the final book in this epic series featuring the dedicated Reavley family, is perhaps the most memorably enthralling of all Perry’s novels.
After four long years, peace is finally in sight. But chaplain Joseph Reavley and his sister Judith, an ambulance driver on the Western Front, are more hard pressed than ever. Behind the lines, violence is increasing: soldiers are abusing German prisoners, a nurse has been raped and murdered, and the sinister ideologue called the Peacemaker now threatens to undermine the peace just as he did the war.
Then Matthew, the third Reavley sibling and an intelligence expert, suddenly arrives at the front with startling news. The Peacemaker’s German counterpart has offered to go to England and expose his co-conspirator as a traitor. But with war still raging and prejudices inflamed, such a journey would be fraught with hazards, especially since the Peacemaker has secret informers everywhere, even on the battlefield.
For richness of plot, character, and feeling, We Shall Not Sleep is unmatched. Anne Perry’s brilliantly orchestrated finale is a heartstopping tour de force, mesmerizing and totally satisfying.
Author Bio:
Anne Perry (born Juliet Hulme) is a British historical novelist.
Juliet took the name "Anne Perry", the latter being her stepfather's surname. Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published under this name in 1979. Her works generally fall into one of several categories of genre fiction, including historical murder mysteries and detective fiction. Many of them feature a number of recurring characters, most importantly Thomas Pitt, who appeared in her first novel, and amnesiac private investigator William Monk, who first appeared in her 1990 novel The Face of a Stranger. As of 2003 she had published 47 novels, and several collections of short stories. Her story "Heroes", which first appeared the 1999 anthology Murder and Obsession, edited by Otto Penzler, won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.
No Graves As Yet (#1)
Shoulder the Sky (#2)
Angels in the Gloom (#3)
At Some Disputed Barricade (#4)
We Shall Not See (#5)
