Bücher von Ian Wilson

Following the death of her father while fishing with friends, Sarah Pennington moves back to her parents' farm in Cheshire where she spent her childhood, and which revives beautiful memories of growing up in the countryside.After a chance meeting with artist Jonathon Ripley, Sarah feels drawn into an image she finds in the local village gallery, so much so that she almost finds herself standing on its wooden bridge leading into dense woodland, surrounded by a cloudy mist. Just able to make out a mysterious figure seemingly standing amongst the trees, she buys the painting and persuades Jonathon to help her embark on the hunt to find out more about the bewildering image.Turning detective, they set out to discover other paintings that have also had a profound effect on their owners, some having terrifying experiences while others calming and serene. But Sarah is convinced her late father has something to do with the paintings as the mystery behind their owners begins to unravel, and her suspicions become even more unfathomable.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.The great Biblical flood so described in Genesis has long been a subject of fascination and speculation. In the 19th century the English archbishop James Ussher established it as having happened in the year 2348 B.C., calculating what was then taken as the age of the earth and working backward through the entire series of Biblical "begats." Proof of the flood, which is an element of so many creation myths, began in earnest when archaeology started connecting physical evidence with Biblical story. The dream of proving the Bible as literal truth has proven irresistible, producing both spurious claims and serious scholarship.As best-selling historian Ian Wilson reveals in this fascinating new book, evidence of a catastrophic event has been building steadily, culminating in the work of William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Several years ago Ryan and Pitman had posited that around 5600 BC there had an inundation in the Black Sea of such proportions that it turned the freshwater lake into a saltwater lake by connecting it to the Mediterranean. Were that true, they estimated that there would be signs of civilization 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea. In September 2000, using his famous underwater equipment, Robert Ballard (of SS Titanic fame) explored parts of the Black Sea near the Turkish shore and found the remains of wood houses. There had been a flood, and whether God's wrath or not it had destroyed everything around it for hundreds of miles, killing tens of thousands of people.Exploring all the archeological evidence, Wilson explains how the Black Sea flood and the Biblical flood have to be connected. In particular, Wilson argues, learnedly and persuasively, that the center of the civilized world was further to the West than previously thought-not in Egypt or Mesopotamia but in what is today Northern Turkey. The earliest, antediluvian civilizations may have migrated east into those places we have come to call the cradles of civilization, forced by the Black Sea flood to create new settlements. Scrupulous in its details and compelling in its sweep, Before the Flood is narrative detective history at its most provocative, contributing a vital new chapter to the debate about the Bible and origins of the modern world.

A first-time-in-paperback reissue, this full-fledged biography takes on all of the famous Shakespearean debates, from whether or not Shakespeare actually wrote his plays to speculation regarding his sexuality to the mysterious curse he set upon his own grave. This lively and provocative book weaves together the most complete, objective, and readable account of Shakespeare's life ever written. Includes 24 pages of illustrations.

Approaches Jesus' crucifixion from the perspective of a crime scene investigator: What do we know is fact? What can be historically documented? What can we deduce may have happened? Taking the popular CSI television dramas as inspiration, this work outlines what is known for sure about Jesus' trial and crucifixion.

As the world comes to terms with the horror of nuclear terrorism another even more devastating threat emerges. But who is behind this and what are their intentions? With only scraps of evidence to go on two British officers, Jack Riley and Helen Bascombe, uncover a plot involving a secret religious sect whose family histories can be traced back to the Crusades. The search for the conspirators takes place against a backdrop of deteriorating relations with the USA where the President prefers the affairs of the bedroom to the affairs of State. When British and American nuclear missile submarines start playing cat and mouse in the North Atlantic they eventually run out of room to manoeuvre and there follows a desperate race against time to prevent a global disaster that would threaten the future of mankind.