Reay Tannahill Books In Order

Dame Constance de Clair Books In Order

Having the Builders in (2006)
Having the Decorators in (2007)

Novels

A Dark and Distant Shore (1983)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1985)
Passing Glory (1989)
In Still and Stormy Waters (1992)
Return of the Stranger (1995)
Fatal Majesty (1998)
The Seventh Son (2001)

Non fiction

Paris in the Revolution (1966)
The Fine Art of Food (1969)
Food in History (1973)
Flesh and Blood (1975)
Sex in History (1980)

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Reay Tannahill Books Overview

A Dark and Distant Shore

Reay Tannahill’s great bestseller is the story of one extraordinary woman’s determination to win back her birthright the remote and beautiful West Highlandcastle ofKinveil sold by her father to aGlasgow merchant when she was seven years old. It is also the intricate picture of a family in the heyday of the British Empire, an epic story spanning almost a hundred years and stretching fromEdinburgh to the Crimea, from an expandingAmerica to theIndia of the Raj.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil

Leaving her home in the sunbleached courts ofAvignon, gently nurtured, seventeen year old Ninian rides into the darkness and strife ofScotland to marry a stranger. Her path crosses that of Gavin Cameron of Kinveil, priest and Chancellor of Scotland. Laconic, ambitious and handsome, he is the one man the Stewart king dares to trust, the one man strong enough to save the kingdom from the civil war planned by the charming, implacable Archdeacon Columba Crozier and his bast*ard sun, Adam de Verne. Tied by blood on one side and by an overwhelming and forbidden love on the other, Ninian, growing from her careless girlhood into a beautiful woman and an artist of brilliance and power, is precipitated into violence and tragedy, in which she, too, has a vital part to play.

In Still and Stormy Waters

Two women, born to different worlds, tied unknowingly by blood and locked in bitter rivalry for theHighland estate, and the man they both lay claim to! Sophie wilful, entrancing toast of exotic Hong Kong blissfully immune to the deceitful deals, clash of cultures, and growing menace of the opium trade that threaten her beloved city. Rachel subtle and stubborn, plucked from the slums of Victorian London to a new life and status in the remote Scottishcastle ofJuran then faced with the loss of what has become her obsession. Ranier Blake clever, manipulative banker with interests inScotland andHong Kong and in both women. And Blake alone knows the tangled history of Rachel, Sophie and Juran! From vivid Hong Kong toScotland’s stormy west coast, the two women play out their passions against a background of intrigue and violence. But only one can win what they both so desire!

Return of the Stranger

Shocked to find that they and the family fortune have been left in the hands of a total stranger, Grace Smith and her daughters readjust their lives to welcome a newcomer in their lives, but a distant cousin’s schemes threaten to destroy the family.

Fatal Majesty

Fatal Majesty is the story of Mary, Queen of Scots but this is no conventional retelling of a fascinating yet familiar tale. Returning from the sophisticated court of France to take up her throne in a cold and backward Scotland, eighteen year old Mary found herself trapped in a web of ambitions and intrigues those of her self righteous brother, James, whose ambition was to rule in her place; of her brilliant secretary of state, Lethington, dedicated to placing the Stewarts on the throne of England; and of Elizabeth I, dazzling and unscrupulous, who feared Mary as a threat not only to her crown but to her life. The intrigues of the men closest to Mary were to be responsible for shaping not only her tragedy but also their own. Yet the secretary stabbed to death at her feet, the murder of her husband, her marriage to his murderer, and even her own end on the headsman’s block were not disparate events in an era of easy violence, but episodes in a grand, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately successful design. Reay Tannahill’s masterful control of characterization, pace, and plot combine to deliver a tragic romantic saga with all the complexities of a major political thriller.

The Seventh Son

Reay Tannahill’s enthralling new novel is a family saga in the grand tradition, a tale of brother against brother, cousin against cousin, of love, hate and intrigue, of women inescapably entangled in the fates of their men, and of a mystery that has exercised people’s minds for more than five hundred years. At the heart of it all is the dangerous, complex human being known to history as Richard III, here brought vividly alive in Reay Tannahill’s expert hands in his private life cool and sardonic, marrying for gain but learning to love, capable of inspiring great loyalty, and discovering too late that he can be ruled by emotions he is scarcely aware of possessing; in his public life, bold, competent and tireless in pursuit of profit and power, making enemies more easily than friends, and himself in the end falling victim to the most devoted of those enemies the mother of the king who is to succeed him, Henry VII. Here, in all its vivid colour, its rich and absorbing detail, is the story of an extended family in mediaeval England. Here, too, is tragedy. For centuries, Richard has been held guilty of murdering the Princes in the Tower. Reay Tannahill offers a less conventional solution in what is perhaps the best and without doubt the most moving novel she has yet written.

Food in History

An enthralling world history of food from prehistoric times to the present. A favorite of gastronomes and history buffs alike, Food in History is packed with intriguing information, lore, and startling insights like what cinnamon had to do with the discovery of America, and how food has influenced population growth and urban expansion.

Flesh and Blood

In Flesh and Blood, Reay Tannahill explores the age old practice of cannibalism. the author of previous studies on eating and sex, she takes us on a fascinating historical tour of this darkest of gastronomic compulsions including a section on the recent upsurge in cannibalism themed horror fiction and a study of serial killer cannibals such as Jeffrey Dahmer. At the dawn of man, the consumption of human Flesh and Blood was a legitimate ritual practiced by ancient Babylonians and Aztecs alike. The recent media focus may have brought cannibalism into the public eye, but the practice has never wholly left society and still echoes in religious traditions such as the Christian Eucharist. Here is a book that is sure to feed into our current fascination with people who eat people.

Sex in History

Sex in History chronicles the pleasures and perils of the flesh from the time of mankind’s distant ancestors to the modern day; from a sexual act which was bried, crude and purposeful, to the myriad varieties of contemporary sexual mores. Reay Tannahill’s scholarly, yet accessible study ranges from the earliest form of contraception one Egyptian concoction included crocodile dung to some latter day misconceptions about it like the men who joined their lovers in taking the pill ‘just to be on the safe side.’ It surveys all manner of sexual practice, preference and position the acrobatic ‘wheelbarrow’ position, the strenuous ‘hovering butterflies’ position…
and draws on souces as diverse as THE ADMIRABLE DISCOURSES OF THE PLAIN GIRL, the EXHIBTION OF FEMALE FLAGELLANTS, IMPORTANT MATTERS OF THE JADE CHAMBER and THE ROMANCE OF CHASTIseme*nT. Whether writing on androgyny, courtly love, flagellation or zoophilia, Turkish eunuch’s Greek dil*does, Taoist sex manuals or Japanses geisha girls, Reay Tannahill is consistently enlightening and entertaining.