Stevenson Saga
4 primary works
Book 1
England in 1839. A time of change, upheaval and limitless possibility. Every new mile of railroad track and every belching smokestack is a sign of the advancing age of opportunity, where fortune awaits those with the courage and determination to seize it.
""Lord John"" Stevenson is the clever, ruthless and hugely popular foreman working on a project to build the world's longest railway tunnel. A near-fatal accident brings the waifish buyet savvy Nora Telling into his life. Together with an ill-married couple, Walter and Arabella Thornton, they risk everything in their quest to achieve the wealth and power they so desperately desire. Their relentless ambition sets them on a path that will lead to fame, fortune and the founding of a dynasty.
For more information and a full bibliography visit www.malcolmmacdonald.org.
Book 2
Here are all the extremes of wealth and want, prudery and lust, charity and callousness, in an enthralling saga of two passionate families. Here is all the striving and triumph of the rich and the ruthless in the first flush of England's glorious Victorian age.
At a time when fabulous fortunes could be made through the will of a strong man or the wiles of a beautiful woman, John Stevenson's genius as a builder and his wife Nora's clear-eyed, brilliant cunning promise to make the one of England's richest couples. But their fate becomes more and more entwined with that of their friends the Thorntons - repressed and pious Arabella, secretive, sex-obsessed Walter - as whispers of scandal and disgrace threaten to bring them all to ruin...
For more information and a full bibliography visit www.malcolmmacdonald.org
Book 3
"Boy" Stevenson and his brother Caspar have a problem: they are the two eldest sons of John Stevenson, one of the richest men in the world. Their mother, Nora, also has a considerable private fortune of her own. By their own skill, by luck, and by ruthlessness, they made their way to the top of the money tree. But Society has been slow to accept them, for in early Victorian England all the money in the world could not guarantee entry into the exclusive inner world of privilege.
John believes that Society will eventually accept them, but only if they behave absolutely correctly; none of them must step out of line, not even to flout the most trivial of conventions. Nora is not willing to pay so high a price. And Caspar, as he grows up, finds himself increasing rebelling against the neat army career his father has decreed for him. Casper's older brother, Boy, is by contrast the soul of convention. His one aim in life is to obey his father and to do his duty. Yet, by an astonishing chain of events he, too, is led into open defiance of John.
These tensions, which threaten to tear the family apart link the many separate dramas of the story as these four utterly different people cope with the love-hates of family life.
Book 4
Abigail Stevenson is beautiful and talented, passionate and headstrong. Her parents, in reaction to their own struggle out of poverty, have brought her up to the innocence and idleness that are the privilege of the Victorian ruling class; but Abigail will have none of the cloistered aristocratic life they intend for her.
From the moment she tricks her maid, Annie, into divulging the secret of what happens between men and women, Abigail's life becomes a voyage of discovery.
This is both a gripping and passionate story of one woman's fight to free herself from the shackles of her social class and an electrifying vision of the Victorian era.