Fiction by Stuart Shotwell
The following books by Stuart Shotwell are available from your favorite local bookseller or online bookstore, at the full retail price, in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They may also be available in other countries depending on your bookseller’s sourcing system. In some countries they may also be purchased at a 25-percent discount directly from the printer, LightningSource, using the links provided after the descriptive text on this page.
These novels are not for everyone. They are lengthy, but all the more rich for that. If you find most novels thin fare, or even if you have given up reading novels altogether, these may make you change your mind about fiction. The best of them, and the place to start, is Edmund Persuader.
The Hampshire Romances
Edmund Persuader
Second edition, complete in five volumes
Edmund Percy has been driven from the hurricane-haunted seas of the Caribbean to the heart of England’s tranquil Hampshire in search of the Dark Queen foretold to him. He must unriddle the taunting mystery of her past, if he can; and he must use that discovered secret to win her with his most silver persuasions. It seems that all his efforts avail nothing, and the days and minutes allotted to his quest race away. Then fate or Providence slips a last chance into his hand . . .
An epic, a romance, and a mystery, Edmund Persuader is the tale of a man both blessed and cursed by his powers of persuasion. Those powers seem to perform the greatest wonders when they work him ill, yet fail when he needs them most—until he can emerge from the depths of moral error and climb toward the exaltation of redeeming love.
Volume 1, 398 pages, $24.95
Volume 2, 322 pages, $24.95
Volume 3, 330 pages, $22.95
Volume 4, 168 pages, $15.95
Volume 5, 350 pages, $24.95
Note: The content of this second edition is essentially the same as that of the first edition, despite the difference in the number of volumes.
Tomazina’s Folly, or Love Unsought
Complete in five volumes
Stuart Shotwell’s Hampshire Romances, set in Southern England in the early 1800s, continue in this spin-off promised in the final pages of Edmund Persuader. Here is the tale of a unique character, Tomazina Comstock, both earnest and impulsive, impeccably good and inevitably a failure in her own eyes, both strait-laced and oversexed, too quick to speak and too witty for her own good, and yet somehow beloved by all who make her acquaintance.
Volume 1, 410 pages, $24.95
Volume 2, 300 pages, $19.95
Volume 3, 422 pages, $24.95
Volume 4, 226 pages, $15.95
Volume 5, 362 pages, $22.95
Novels
Summer Sure to Die
Complete in two volumes
Summer Sure to Die is the story of the young Ryan Kinsella, staunchly Irish-American, who has achieved considerable success in a time and place—New England in the later twentieth century— in which blue-blood prejudice persists. His best friend, in fact, is Collin Tate, of an old Boston Brahmin family. In the summer of 1981, Collin’s long-absent twin sister returns from Spain, and it soon seems that Ryan has been marked for a brutal disappointment—or for the discovery of how he can be truly himself.
Volume 1, 608 pages, $35.95
Volume 2, 662 pages, $35.95
The Marriage of Raphael Kerr
Complete in five volumes
The Marriage of Raphael Kerr begins in 1792 with a shipwreck on a deserted island off the coast of Scotland. It then wends its way through the heart of England and onward to a land that may be a dream and may be real. It is the story of a marriage forged in youth that forms a man for life, of a second marriage, of hopes honored and hopes wrenched away.
Volume 1, 358 pages, $19.95
Volume 2, 392 pages, $19.95
Volume 3, 286 pages, $15.95
Volume 4, 298 pages, $15.95
Volume 5, 228 pages, $14.95
A Novella
Elissa Wyatt, or Aeon’s End
Complete in one volume
Set in the valley of Deepclough in the Cotswolds, England, in 1811–1813, Elissa Wyatt is the story of a woman who grows beyond her given roles of daughter and sister, becoming in addition a lover and a seeker. She is meanwhile stalked by darkness in her own home and on the margins of the land, the land where the garden stands: the garden, with its song, its peace, and its fruitfulness. When the good suddenly seem to be evil, when the honest lie, she is swept toward disaster on a current greater than her power to resist. Only the pain of the truth can liberate her, and only her moral courage and her intellect enable her to bend that bitter truth toward salvation. Ultimately, Elissa Wyatt is a tale about all of us . . . at Aeon’s End.
624 pages, $29.95
Short Stories
Tales of Arcadia
Complete in one volume
This is the second edition of the first fiction publication by the author of Edmund Persuader. It includes the fourteen pieces of the original edition—the twelve short stories framed by two essays—but it is enlarged by the addition of a new afterword and a final story that have not previously appeared.
As the author writes in his preface: “Arcadia is no place. It is in the mind of the poet or the writer who retreats to it. As Vergil showed us, it is by no means an ideal world. It mirrors the strains of the writer’s life and times. My Arcadia is perhaps more georgic than others. It is part Maine, part wider New England, part old England, part the classical Arcadia. . . . Most of these tales deal with an old theme, the struggle for understanding of self in the context of companionship.”
264 pages, $19.95
A General Comment about Sources and Quality
Despite its name, LightningSource may take up to three weeks to print and deliver books, especially late in the year as the holidays approach. Requesting rush printing is worthwhile if you are willing to spend a little more. (At peak times, rush printing may not be available.) Because the books are individually printed, variations will occur in the trim dimensions and the “wrap” of the covers, as well as the shade of the paper and the cover ink; furthermore, the spine elements may not align across a set. Books may also receive minor dents in shipping. These variations are not considered defects by LightningSource or by the publisher.
Special Orders from the Publisher
Copies of the two-volume first-edition set of Edmund Persuader are available directly from the publisher, as are a limited number of complete sets of other titles. At this time you must personally know the author to make use of this service.
Mermaid Press ships only by United States Postal Service Priority Mail, and all orders are charged a flat fee of $20 for shipping and handling. (Note that this unfortunately large handling fee may be completely or fully offset by the discount available from the publisher.)
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