St. Benet's Books

When Alice, shy, dumpy, bored and unhappy with herself, wanders the City of London during her lunch hour, she stumbles without warning into a situation which will revolutionise her life. Brought up by a strict maiden aunt devoted to rationalism, Alice hardly foresees that she'll be drawn into the mysterious, seemingly irrat

WHEN YOU LIVE THE DREAM, YOU LIVE THE CONSEQUENCES...Cool, blonde Carter Graham is a successful lawyer who believes she is well on the way to reaching all the goals listed in her glamorous life plan: first-class job, a stylish flat in London, and marriage to the man of her dreams, Kim Betz. But Carter forgot that sometimes the best laid dreams turn into nightmares. Kim's ex-wife Sophie starts to stalk her and Kim turns from being the self-contained, controlled husband into a man who lies not only about his past but about his present. Carter finds herself drawn into an expanding web of deceit, corruption and evil which eventually threatens not only her sanity but her life. What is it that Sophie is trying so hard to tell her? Who is the sinister Mrs Mayfield, who has such an influence on Kim? And what is the significance of the other new man in Carter's life, her secretary Eric Tucker? Carter seeks help from the healers of St. Benets, the enigmatic Nicholas Darrow, the eccentric Lewis Hall, and kind, thoughtful Alice but even they cannot save her from a searing ordeal as she struggles to uncover the truth about the tormented man she has married.

Deftly combining the sacred and the profane—the unmistakable hallmark of her fiction over the past decade—Susan Howatch gives us a spellbinding, suspenseful and psychologically intense new novel. The financial heart of London—the City—is an adrenaline-charged square mile deep in recession in the 1990s, a place where sex is just another commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. And the City is where the life of Gavin Blake, who sells sex to high flyers, is finally about to unravel. In the center of the City is St. Benet’s, a church that ministers to the casualties of this affluent but amoral society. Carta Graham, the St. Benet’s fundraiser, is at once attracted to Gavin when they meet through a mutual friend, but slowly she realizes that she has entered a relationship far more complex than she could ever have imagined. Gavin is desperate to escape from his world of prostitution, pornography and violence, but as his involvement with Carta and St. Benet’s deepens, the dangers that encircle him escalate until his life itself is on the line. Carta is determined to help him—but will their mysterious journey together be lifesaving or soul-destroying? All she can do is fight her hardest to help Gavin survive. Consistently surprising and powerfully moving, The Heartbreaker is Susan Howatch’s most gripping novel yet.