P.S.
2 total works
After crashing and burning during his PhD viva, Mason Ambrose is offered a large amount of money to come to the Isla de Sangre to instruct the daughter of wealthy Edwina Sabachtani. He is to use his knowledge as a philosopher to instil a conscience, a moral compass, in Edwina's daughter Londa following a diving accident which has supposedly destroyed her sense of right and wrong. Mason happily instructs her in schools of thought, from the stoics to the epicureans. But it is when he introduces her to the Beatitudes that the seeds of a rampaging sense of justice are sown and Londa becomes determined that the meek really shall inherit the earth! She becomes something of a 'celebrity saint' but then she takes her crusade too far, kidnapping a boat full of wealthy industrialists. A funny, tongue in cheek but also thought-provoking novel from the author of THE LAST WITCHFINDER that asks important questions about what makes us human and how we makes choices in a complex world.
Jennet is the daughter of the Witchfinder of Mercia and East Anglia. Whilst her father roams the countryside with her brother Dunstan in search of heretics, Jennet is left behind to be schooled by her aunt Isobel in the New Philosophy principally expounded by Isaac Newton. But her aunt's style of scientific enquiry soon attracts the attention of the witchfinders. To save her aunt, Jennet travels to Cambridge to seek the help of Newton himself. On the way she meets Dr Barnaby Cavendish and his 'Museum of Wondrous Prodigies' including the Bird-Child of Bath, The Lyme Bay Fish Boy and the Sussex Rat Baby. What they haven't bargained on is being hoodwinked by Newton's great rival Robert Hooke. Isobel is burned at the stake but in her dying moments, begs Jennet to devote her life to overturning the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. This is a huge rollercoaster of a novel as Jennet travels to America and witnesses the Salem witch trials; is abducted by Indians; begins an affair with Benjamin Franklin; travels back to England and finally meets the real Newton; is shipwrecked; then ends up back in America where her brother is now the Witchfinder Royal.
In a great final showdown between old superstition and new science, Jennet decides to have herself accused of witchcraft in order to disprove its existence.
In a great final showdown between old superstition and new science, Jennet decides to have herself accused of witchcraft in order to disprove its existence.