Books by Alexander Cordell

It is the time of the Rebecca Riots when economic turmoil and unjust taxes have left the communities of south Wales in dire poverty with many on the brink of starvation. Atime when young men ride through the night smashing and burning the symbols of their oppression. The Mortymer family have left their home in the iron-making country of Blaenafon to seek work in the coal mines of the south. Young Jethro Mortymer decides that he must join the rioters in their bitter struggle even as he is tortured by his own struggle to conceal the love he has for the beautiful Mari, his brother's wife.THE HOSTS OF REBECCA is a brilliant continuation of Alexander Cordell's classicstory of mid-nineteenth century Wales which began with THE RAPE OF THE FAIR COUNTRY.

Hywel Mortymer's story begins in 1800 when he is sixteen and a dramatic change in fortune leads him, innocent and inexperienced, to a brutal anddangerous life working in the coal mines. In the mines children can be horribly maimed in devastating gas explosions,or grow deformed with the burden of their labours and babies are born underground. Wales is in turmoil. A tragic divide between rich and poor, the workers powerless,penniless, starving and diseased sparks growing unrest as the newly founded Unions move inexorably towards the Chartist Rebellion. This Proud and Savage Land is a brilliantly detailed chronicle of early nineteenth-century Wales and a prelude to the bestselling Rape of the Fair Country.

Mostyn Evan and his family, miners turned bargees, wage a glorious but hopeless struggle against rapacious coalmasters, Irish navvies, the ravages of cholera, and the bullying illegal Unions. As they ply their trade between the furnaces of Cyfarthfa and the lush beauty of the Neath Valley, they pray and fight, sing and love, and face each obstacle undaunted with all the stubbornness and exuberance of Wales itself. This is the third instalment in Alexander Cordell's magnificent saga of nineteenth century Wales that began with classic bestseller The Rape of the Fair Country.