'A beautiful, beautiful book . . . archaeology is changing so much about the way we view the so-called Dark Ages ... [Williams] is just brilliant at bringing them to light' Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past. As Tolkien knew, Britain in the 'Dark Ages' was a mosaic of little kingdoms. Many of them fell by the wayside. Some vanished without a trace. Others have stories that can be told. ELMET. HWICCE. LINDSEY. DUMNONIA. ESSEX. RHEGED. POWYS. SUSSEX. FORTRIU. In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain, uncovers the forgotten origins and untimely demise of nine kingdoms that hover in the twilight between history and fable, whose stories hum with saints and gods and miracles, with giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Why did some realms – like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd – prosper while these nine fell? From the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish...

The collected stories of Thomas Williams, author of eight novels including National Book Award winner The Hair of Harold Roux. Most of these stories first appeared in Esquire, the New Yorker, or the Saturday Evening Post.

A story of terror and revenge, death, love, responsibility, the nature of reality—and an individual man. Luke Carr, whose wife and children have been killed in a plane crash, runs from his life, and work assignment, to the woods of New England where he's also running from a series of anonymous letters being sent his way.

A New York businessman (whose wife has just left him) and his estranged son come to New Hampshire for a hunting trip.

A love story that takes on all the passion and pain of early adulthood. A great look at post–World War II America."...warm and brilliant novel." —Chicago Tribune

Set in Williams' fictional city of Leah, New Hampshire, Whipple's Castle is a mansion within the town where the Whipple family resides—husband, wife, three sons and a daughter, each with their own worries and dilemmas. Williams takes a close look at the darker side of small-town life through this family and their lives in this novel set in the 40's.

Williams debut collection of stories which was awarded the Dial Press Fellowship for Fiction. Many of the stories were previously published and one was an O.Henry prize winning story. From the author: "Although when I wrote them I was never conscious of any central theme in these stories, it seems to me they are all concerned with the conflict in man between his violence and his gentleness. I don't know the outcome of tis conflict, but I must keep trying to find out.

A story Williams wrote for his children—spinning it from The Hair of Harold Roux, his National Book Award–winning novel. Two children enter a secret valley within a mountain and encounter a people with whom they share a strange kinship.Thomas Williams published eight novels and a collection of short stories over three decades beginning in 1955. In 1975 he won a National Book Award for The Hair of Harold Roux, which, like several of his works, was set in the fictionalized Leah, New Hampshire.

John Cotter returns reluctantly to the smug New England town from where he had escaped via the G.I. Bill and foreign study fellowships. His older and much hated brother Bruce is dying of a brain tumor, and his possessive mother and stunned father requested John's presence. Upon his return he discovers what sort of person he could be through the love of a girl who made an unfortunate marriage. He also is affected by finding and reading his brother's secret diary, through his parents' reactions to Bruce's dying state, through his friendship for the town bum and through the events leading up to and culminating in the violence and fury of a forest fire.