David Stacton: 13 books

'King Ludwig has fascinated me ever since I was a child, yet fascination is not quite the right word. Fellow-feeling would be the proper phrase...' David Stacton, 1957 With his fourth published novel - and his first on historical themes and personages - David Stacton's writing career took a...

'Dancer in Darkness is a unique three-way collaboration - the tragic tale of the murdered Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, as told in Renaissance Italian sources, then in The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster's masterpiece of Jacobean revenge and fate, and now here by David Stacton, the literally...

Sir William (1963) was the second entry in David Stacton's triptych of novels on the theme of 'The Sexes', for which he chose to fictionalise one of history's great love affairs. 'David Stacton's novel of the notorious ménage à trois between the fetching Lady Hamilton, her husband Sir William,...

With Old Acquaintance (1962) David Stacton embarked upon his third literary triptych, this one on the theme of 'The Sexes'. 'Even in these one-worldly days of cultural colonies and jet-setters, most US authors trying to depict European sophistication seem indefinably out of their league, like...

David Stacton’s The Judges of The Secret Court is a long-lost triumph of American fiction as well as one of the finest books ever written about the Civil War. Stacton’s gripping and atmospheric story revolves around the brothers Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, members of a famous theatrical family....

'Segaki is the story of two men, a woman, a dog, and a handful of snails. It is a very simple story. But like most simple stories, it is also a parable... It is the third volume of three novels concerned with various aspects of the religious experience... Segaki deals with [the] getting of wisdom,...

The last of the three trilogies authored by David Stacton (1923-68) was described by the author as 'an intermezzo designed to deal with sexual relations'. After Old Acquaintance (1962) and Sir William (1963) came Kaliyuga (1965), described by Stacton as 'the story of the relations of Siva and Kali,...

'People of the Book is set in the Thirty Years' War, which began and still shapes our present system of world order. David Stacton's incomparable prose reveals how the treatises of scholars and the tactics of commanders so rarely comprehend the vagaries of the human condition. A book to put on the...

First published in 1960, A Signal Victory was David Stacton's eighth novel, and the first in what he envisaged as an 'American Triptych.' In this opening panel Stacton paints a vivid picture of the impact of two great civilisations upon each other. Guerrero was a Spanish soldier, shipwrecked on the...

'Christopher's house stood out on its cliff like stages of lunar madness. It was the night of the first storm, not of winter, but of that week before winter which is the last warning to all creatures to dig themselves in...' Christopher Barocco is a self-made man of considerable means who decrees...

'Yes, it was a crusade. But just what was it the people out there feared and hated so much? Not surely the candidate. He was a decent man. Or was that it?' With Tom Fool (1962) David Stacton concluded a triptych of novels drawn from the history of America. For this final panel he turned his...

On a cold Northern Californian evening, high on a cliff in the lagoon township of Bolinas, a woman is running, barefoot, toward her open convertible. Behind her in the dark is the forbidding summer house where her reclusive husband now lies dead. She will drive to San Francisco, there to break the...

'On A Balcony is devoted to the 14th century [B.C.] and the Pharaoh Ikhnaton, his sister-wife Nefertiti, the sculptor Tutmose, and the rivalry his religion of Aton brought to Egypt and its then current cult of Amon... presenting Ikhnaton's imposition of a new religion upon those who look on him as...