Roger Teichmann

In 1935, Susan Shawe abandons England for Mussolini’s Italy, marrying a Fascist official and cutting herself off from her family. Thirty-seven years later, her nephew Charlie follows her path to Rome, hoping escape will give his life direction . . . Seductive and atmospheric, Chronicle of a Dream is a psychologically sharp literary thriller about ideological power, a dangerous legacy, and a past that repeats itself with devastating consequences.

Julius Durward, 64-year-old author of the cult book Pandora’s Mirror, is visiting the French town of Uzès hoping to meet up with old friends. His memory failing, haunted by a past tragedy, Julius finds himself being pressured to support two wildly different causes, the Utopianism of an aging American billionaire and the radical extremism of an underground environmentalist group. As the mistral blows and civil unrest everywhere increases, Julius’s world appears on the verge of disintegrating.

Why is bestselling author Tessa Wainwright visiting Oxford again after so many years abroad? Even Vince, her agent and factotum, is in the dark but Conrad Merrivale, a student doing vacation work at the hotel she’s staying at, unearths the reason. Conrad, with his taste for hard drugs and Richard Wagner, decides to blackmail Tessa, setting in train a cat and mouse between him and Vince which eventually spirals into violence and death.