Shadows in the Wind: Corpus Quadripartitum: Volume 1

From the firestorms of the London Blitz to the dreaming spires of Oxford and the shadowed forests of Africa, Shadows in the Wind - Corpus Quadripartitum: Volume I traces the beginnings of a sweeping saga where innocence is stripped away, love collides with power, and ideals are tested against the encroaching machinery of greed and violence.

This first collectors' volume contains Book I: Tenebris Ordior (Darkness Begins) and Book II: Aurora Inter Tenebras (Dawn Among Shadows).

In Tenebris Ordior, eleven-year-old William Braithwaite is torn from his family as bombs fall over London and shipped to South Africa under the government's evacuation scheme. Promised safety, he finds himself instead at Trewil Loop, a farmstead beneath the Drakensberg mountains, in the care of Jacques de Beer-a man broken by loss and hardened by bitterness. What begins as survival in a foreign land becomes a crucible of cruelty and compromise, forging William into something far darker than a mere survivor. This haunting tale sets the stage for a multigenerational drama of power and moral decay, where the shadows of childhood stretch long into the corridors of espionage and corporate intrigue.

In Aurora Inter Tenebras, the story shifts decades forward to Oxford, where Jamie Soper, bound by family duty, crosses paths with Julie Capriot, a French zoologist whose passion for bonobos and their matriarchal societies challenges him to imagine a new kind of world. Their love unfolds in gardens, libraries, and riverside walks-a sanctuary built on shared dreams of justice and empathy. Yet beyond their circle of hope, William Braithwaite's shadow lengthens. As he builds his empire of influence, corruption and violence press ever closer, threatening to consume all that Jamie and Julie hold dear.

Together, these two novels form the opening movement of Corpus Quadripartitum-a saga for readers of Robert Harris, John le Carr? and Ken Follett. At once intimate and expansive, Volume I captures both the tenderness of first love and the unflinching truth that every dawn is haunted by the darkness from which it rises.