NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first in Susan Howatch's acclaimed novels centering on the glorious Cathedral of Starbridge, Glittering Images is a masterful depiction of spiritual hubris, the seductions of power, and the moral dilemmas of England between the wars.
“Passionately eloquent . . . [A] tale of God, sex, love, self-analysis and forgiveness . . . The dialogue throughout...

In nineteenth-century Ireland, the de Salis family carries on through times of both riches and hardship, but their hard-won resilience will be threatened by tragedy of their own making. When Edward de Salis travels to America after the death of his first wife, he is astonished to find himself falling in love with Marguerite, a young woman many years his junior. Full of hope for the future, he returns to his Irish estate, Cashelmara, but in nineteenth-century...

Cornelius Van Zale has the talent and ambition to unite his family's New York banking empire, but his heart is trapped in the past. Cornelius Van Zale considers himself lucky to have reached the top rank of his great-uncle's Wall Street bank. But along with the banker's gilded lifestyle comes a world of complicated affairs, bitter rivalries, and decades of unfinished business. As young Cornelius struggles to suppress the memories of his brutal past,...

Charles Ashworth, the bishop of Starbridge, is a man of great accomplishment, confidence, and conviction. Within the Church, he has earned a reputation as a strong, efficient, no-nonsense bishop. Outside the Church, he is known as “Anti-Sex Ashworth.” But when Ashworth's beloved wife dies, a profound crisis of his faith begin. unexpectedly and with brutal force. As bereavement overwhelms his spiritual equilibrium, his strict morality is quickly...

Set in the years of sudden prosperity following World War II, in the mansions and boardrooms of the Van Zale family, Sins of the Fathers is the story of a ruthless dynastic struggle to control the Van Zale fortune. From generation to generation, this obsession possesses the rival claimants, eventually destroying their happiness and their lives. When the world of the Van Zales—with its servants and country houses, polite marriages and discreet affairs—begins...