By the Sword

Romance

By Alison Stuart

Publisher : Wordclay

ABOUT Alison Stuart

Alison Stuart
Alison was born in Kenya and emigrated to Melbourne at the age of ten. She studied law at Melbourne University and has worked in a variety of areas as a lawyer, including the military. In 2000 she moved to Singapore with her husband and sons and for three years was able to pursue serious,  More...

Description

England 1651: Since her husband's death, young widow, Kate Ashley has done her best to provide for and protect her son, Tom, from the reality of an England in the grip of civil war. Their comfortable life is shattered when Tom inherits the Thornton family estate in Worcestershire. The estate is impoverished and in shambles and Kate discovers that with the estate she is inherited trouble in the form of the last of the Thorntons, the fugitive royalist, Jonathan Thornton. Jonathan has returned from exile carrying with him the vain hopes of the young King Charles II and the demons of his own dark past. In the aftermath of the Battle of Worcester, Kate finds herself caught between Jonathan and the man who has hunted him down across the years, the dour Parliamentarian, Stephen Prescott. Jonathan must must face his nemesis and learn the price he paid for his long dead love, a secret that will change his life, and Kate's forever.

How did I come to write By The Sword? The inspiration came from a house. When I was 11 my grandfather, who lived nearby, took me to visit Harvington Hall near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. Something about the serene, red-brick, medieval, moated manor house captured my imagination and by my teenage years I had renamed it Seven Ways and populated it with a fictional family – the Thorntons. Generations of the Thornton family had exciting adventures written in pencil in spiral bound notepads. Over the years, the notepads were put away and the Thorntons forgotten.

"By The Sword was one of the most moving and powerful books I have read in a very long time. You could actually feel the struggle these two characters had to endure to be together. Alison Stuart really drove home how hard it was for people of that time especially woman to survive. Her book felt so real that I wondered if anyone living today could ever cope with the way life was back then. This book pulls at your heart strings and you hold your breath until the very end praying for these two characters."  
5 CUPS:  Coffee Time Romance September 2007

"...I read the prologue and cried like a baby. Yes, on page 3, Alison Stuart had this cynical businesswoman weeping...This is not a comedy. I wept through most of it. Whether it was a touching scene between the hero and the heroine's young son or during the death scenes (including those of children – this is war, after all), the writing and story moved me.
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Yep, sometimes a book is called the best of the best because it is simply that… the best."  Enduring Romance Blogspot

Other Book(s) By Alison Stuart