4 Novels by Pauline Gedge
Requirements: ePUB Reader, 2.37 MB
Overview: I was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on December 11, 1945, the first of three girls. Six years later my family emigrated to England where my father, an ex-policeman, wanted to study for the Anglican ministry. We lived in an ancient and very dilapidated cottage in the heart of the English Buckinghamshire woodland, and later in a small village in Oxfordshire called Great Haseley. I grew up surrounded by countryside that I observed, played in, and grew to know and love passionately, and I wrote lyrically of its many moods.
Genre: Historical Fiction
House of Illusions
Kamen is a young man whose past is shrouded in mystery. Adopted as a baby into the household of Men, a wealthy merchant, he enjoys all the advantages and privileges of life as a member of Egypt’s upper classes.
As a junior officer in the army of Ramses III, he is sent one day on a routine assignment to southern Egypt with one of Pharoah’s heralds. On their return to the Delta they are forced to put in for one night at Aswat; a small, poor village most officials try to avoid as they ply their business up and down the Nile. For at Aswat they are likely to be accosted by a madwoman who endeavours to press upon them a box containing the story of her life. She begs them to deliver it to Pharoah himself, but no one has ever agreed until Kamen, in a moment of compassion, accepts the box.
His innocent pity sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Regretting his moment of weakness, he gives the box to his superior, General Paiis, and from then on neither he nor the woman of Aswat are safe, for the General sends him south again. This time his instructions are to assist in the arrest of the woman for being a public nuisance, but as he sails south Kamen comes to realize that he is travelling with an assassin whose orders are to murder both the woman and himself.
Why is the General concerned with the fate of one insane peasant woman? What threat does she pose and what does the box contain? In this sequel to the story of Thu, the foundations of the Egyptian nobility are shaken. As Kamen struggles to save Thu and himself, and to unravel the secret of his birth, the perpetrators of a plot against the Horus Throne that has remained hidden for seventeen years are finally brought to justice.
House of Dreams was released as Lady of the Reeds in the US
Inspired by the actual plot of a concubine in the harem of Ramses III to poison him, Pauline Gedge has created a most compelling and unforgettable female character – the restless, willful child of a village midwife and her soldier-farmer husband in the tiny hamlet of Aswat, on the edge of the desert far to the south of the royal capital.
Even before she has reached puberty Thu rejects the only future that appears to be possible for her – that of following in her mother’s footsteps as midwife and marrying a son of one of the local peasants. Still, in her fantasies of another kind of life, she would never have imagined herself as one of Pharaoh’s prized concubines. How this comes about and what happens after she falls out of favour is a rich and enthralling story.
Impeccable as always in her recreation of the Egypt of the time, whether the mud huts of Aswat; the household of Hui, master physician and Seer to Pharaoh; the splendours of the court; the intrigues of the harem and of those determined to wrest power from the priests of Amun, Pauline Gedge has once again given us a living, breathing, glorious Egypt of times past in a uniquely satisfying novel.
Scroll of Saqqara was released as Mirage in the US and UK
Prince Khaemwaset, fourth son of the famous Ramses the Great, is wealthy and influential, respected throughout Egypt for his knowledge of medicine and his powerful magic and revered as the country’s foremost scholar and restorer of monuments.
But he has a secret desire. He dreams of finding the mysterious Scroll of Thoth, which will give its possessor the power to raise the dead and understand the language of everything living. Under the guise of legitimate historical research he opens and searches ancient tombs hoping to stumble upon this prize.
Searching among the burial ruins on the high plain of Saqqara he discovers, in a previously undisturbed tomb, a scroll sewn to the hand of a corpse. He cuts it free and takes it home, and though unable to translate it, he reads it aloud without understanding the words. The following day he catches a glimpse of a strange woman who becomes a fascination and then an obsession so violent that Khaemwaset destroys his family and degrades himself in order to possess her.
Only too late does he realize that in giving voice to the spell written on the scroll he has released an instrument of the god Thoth for revenge on the Prince for his many desecrations of sacred places.
Child of the Morning:
Thirty-five centuries ago the sun had a daughter: Hatshepsut. Youngest daughter of the Pharaoh, she was a lithe and magical child. But when her older sister died, it became her duty to purify the dynasty’s bloodline. She was to wed Thothmes, her father’s illegitimate son, who was heir to the throne. But fearing his son’s incompetence, Hatshepsut’s father came to her with startling news. She was to be Pharaoh, ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever known–provided, of course, that the unprecedented ascension by a woman did not inspire the priests to treason or instill in her half-brother and future consort sufficient hatred to have her put to death.
This is the premise for Child of the Morning, based closely on the historical facts. Hatshepsut assumed the throne at the age of fifteen and ruled brilliantly for more than two decades. Her achievements were immortalized on the walls of her magnificent temple at Deir el-Bahri, built by her architect and lover, Senmut.
Sensuous and evocative, Child of the Morning is the story of one of history’s most remarkable women.
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