Ken Follett · 2017 · thriller

Ken Follett's 2017 Kingsbridge novel. In 1558 Ned Willard comes home to Kingsbridge to find England torn by religious hatred. Losing his love to the divide, he joins Queen Elizabeth's new secret service, and his hunt for Catholic plots carries him across Reformation Europe - to Paris for the Bartholomew's Day slaughter, to Seville and the Netherlands, and home to face the Armada in the Channel.

1. 1
   Kingsbridge

   At Christmas 1558 the young merchant's son Ned Willard returns to Kingsbridge to find his city, and his country, splitting apart over religion - and the girl he loves, the Catholic Margery, being married to another.

2. 2
   Calais

   Ned has grown up crossing to the family's business in Calais, England's last foothold in France - a toehold now lost, a first sign of the wider wars of faith that will shape the rest of his life.

3. 3
   Paris

   In the service of Elizabeth's new spymasters, Ned's work takes him to Paris - where he is caught in the horror of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre as Catholic mobs butcher the city's Protestants in the streets.

4. 4
   Seville

   His hunt for the plots against his queen leads him even into the heart of Catholic Spain, to the harbour city of Seville, from which he must scramble aboard a ship to escape the Inquisition's reach.

5. 5
   Antwerp

   Through the war-torn Spanish Netherlands and its rebel ports Ned tracks the money and the messengers of the conspiracies, as the long shadow of King Philip's power gathers against England.

6. 6
   The Channel

   At last the reckoning comes in the Channel itself, where the great Spanish Armada bears down on England in 1588 - and is scattered by storm and fireship, the plots Ned fought all his life broken with it.