Dominion by C J Sansom

Dominion by C J Sansom

Sweet Revenge?

When two senseless killings hit close to home, columnist Clarence Abernathy seeks revenge for the murders--and, ultimately, answers to his own struggles regarding race and faith. After being dragged into the world of inner-city gangs and racial conflict, Clarence is encouraged by fellow columnist Jake Woods to forge an unlikely partnership with a redneck homicide detective. Soon the two find themselves facing dark forces, while unseen eyes watch from above. This re-release of Randy Alcorn's powerful bestseller spins off from Deadline and offers a fascinating glimpse inside heaven.

Can One Man's Search for Justice Stand Up to the Forces of Evil Threatening to Destroy Him?

A shocking murder drags black newspaper columnist Clarence Abernathy into the disorienting world of inner-city gangs and racial conflict. In a desperate hunt for answers to the violence (and to his own struggles with race and faith), Clarence forges an unlikely partnership with redneck detective Ollie Chandler. Despite their differences, Clarence and Ollie soon find themselves sharing the same mission: victory over the forces of darkness vying for dominion.

Filled with insight--and with characters so real you'll never forget them--Dominion is a dramatic story of spiritual searching, racial reconciliation, and hope.

I don't know when I have read a novel that affected me so profoundly. Randy Alcorn has combined a superb mystery/detective story with a lesson in racial relations in America, gang dynamics and symbols, Christian values, and spiritual warfare.

--Dave Kirby, Troy (Alabama) Broadcasting Corporation

Even better than its predecessor.Alcorn's writing remains top-notch.

--Sean Taylor, CBA Marketplace

READER'S GUIDE INCLUDED

Story Behind the Book

Randy Alcorn thoroughly researched his characters, spending time in the inner city with homicide and gang detectives to better create the scenes for this bestselling novel. He set the story in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, and the main character, Clarence Abernathy, is a black journalist whose unforgettable father played baseball in the old Negro Leagues. Randy has received many letters from readers who assume he is African American due to his accurate portrayals of racial issues.

'CJ. Sansom takes a break from his Shardlake series to offer Dominion, an absorbing, thoughtful, spy-politico thriller set in the fog-ridden London of 1952. Not, however, the year as it is usually remembered. Sansom has attempted a difficult format -- the "what if?" novel. What if, in 1940, Lord Halifax became prime minister instead of Churchill? Britain would have made peace with Hitler, Sansom answers, and by 1952 become a totalitarian state, with Germany, acting as puppet-master rather than invader, setting the scene. Churchill, in hiding, is leader of a resistance movement, to which the hero of Dominion, David Fitzgerald, a civil servant hiding his Jewishness, belongs. Part adventure, part espionage, all encompassed by terrific atmosphere and a well-argued "it might have been"' Marcel Berlins, The Times 'An intriguing thriller set in an alternative Britain under the Nazis cunningly reanimates the post-war years as they might have been ... What if the second world war had ended not in 1945, but in 1940? In this haunting, vividly imagined novel by C. J. Sansom, the hinge on which history turns is the resignation of Neville Chamberlain in May 1940... As in the Shardlake novels, set in Tudor England, for which he is best known, Sansom is an admirably expansive and unhurried storyteller. His characters are all given personal histories and richly detailed pasts that serve to provide them with a depth more usually associated with literary fiction than the thriller. Their conversations do more than just drive forward the plot: they help to give substance and reality to the world they inhabit. The alternative Britain that Sansom constructs, a brilliant amalgam of the 1950s as they actually were and as they might have been, is entirely convincing. Throwaway details cleverly add verisimilitude to his portrait. The tale he sets within his parallel universe is at once exciting, sophisticated and moving. There will be few better historical novels published this year' Sunday Times 'This is a big novel with traces of a thriller, in which the good are good and the bad are very bad indeed ... For readers who enjoy a grown-up adventure story Dominion is evocative, alarming and richly satisfying' Daily Express 'Masterly ... sketched with hallucinatory clarity ... Sansom, whose Tudor mysteries showed his feeling for the plight of good people in a brutal, treacherous society, builds his nightmare Britain from the sooty bricks of truth ... From the thuggish "Auxies" who beat up protestors to the apolitical rebellion of the "Jive Boys", every note in Sansom's smoggy hell rings true ...No bulldog defiance in 1940; no weary triumph in 1945; no dogged renewal with the post-war Welfare State: Dominion shows us what a truly broken Britain would look, and feel, like' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'A thriller which is also, and perhaps primarily, a work of alternative or counter-factual history, set in 1952 ... in the manner of Robert Harris's Fatherland. There are fine things a-plenty here, and the plot unfolds compellingly and gallops along briskly. C. J. Sansom has brought off a nice double, writing a good thriller which invites you to ponder the different course history might have taken' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'C. J. Sansom is fascinated by the abuse of power, so it's not surprising that, hot on the heels of his splendid Shardlake series, comes a novel set in a post-war Britain dominated by Nazi ideology ... There have been a number of other novels imagining this kind of alternate history -- Robert Harris's Fatherland, Owen Sheers' Resistance, Len Deighton's SS-GB and, for children, Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon. All are outstanding in different ways but Sansom's Dominion is the most thoroughly imagined in all its ramifications. Like Harris, Sansom has woven a thriller with the tale of a man's growth into moral courage, but he has done it with the compassion and richness that many literary writers should emulate. Every detail of this nightmare Britain rings true ... As in Sansom's Winter in Madrid, the clash between compassion and political conviction is dramatised. David's looks and talent make him as freakish in his way as frail, disabled Frank, and the friendship between someone who can survive institutions and someone who cannot is one of the most affecting aspects of the novel ... Naturally, the weather is awful, and obliges with a choking, oily fog as our heroes battle against hideous odds to get to safety. But both as a historical novel and a thriller, Dominion is absorbing, mordant and written with a passionate persuasiveness ... Bravo!' Independent on Sunday 'One of the thrills of Dominion is to see a writer whose previous talent has been for the captivating dramatisation of real history (in his five books about the Tudor sleuth, Matthew Shardlake, and the Spanish civil war novel Winter in Madrid) creating an invented mid-20th century Britain that has the intricate detail and delineation of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth ...A tremendous novel that shakes historical preconceptions while also sending shivers down the spine' Mark Lawson, Guardian 'The chase is exciting and the action thrilling, but the really absorbing part of this excellent book is the detailed creation of a society that could so easily have existed' Literary Review 'Fans of Robert Harris will love this' Mail on Sunday

C. J. Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a Ph.D. in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. Sansom is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Shardlake series, the Spanish Civil War thriller Winter in Madrid and the number one bestseller Dominion. He lives in Sussex. Discover more at www.cjsansom.com

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780230744165
ISBN 10	0230744168
Title	Dominion
Author	C J Sansom
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pan Macmillan
Year published	2012-10-25
Number of pages	608
Prizes	Short-listed for CrimeFest eDunnit Award 2013 (UK), Long-listed for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2014 (Ireland)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable