On Angel Mountain — Brian John

This is the first novel in the best-selling 8-volume Angel Mountain Saga, about the life and times of the incorrigible, passionate and very imperfect heroine Martha Morgan. In 1796, Martha becomes the mistress of the struggling Plas Ingli estate, at only eighteen years old. She is pregnant and suicidal. Though she loves her husband David dearly, she is desperately lonely in a strange house, and her quick wit and cutting humour make her as many enemies as friends. There are mysteries surrounding the great fire that devastated the estate but Martha's questions about it remain unanswered. Nobody else seems to realize that their haughty servant Moses Lloyd, the disinherited son of the local squire, is not as trustworthy as the rest of the family would like to think. The local gentry consider that Martha is far too clever for her own good, and indeed it seems inevitable that she will fall into a trap which is designed to send her to the gallows. How can she possibly escape On Angel Mountain is a gripping tale in the tradition of Winston Graham's Poldark. The world which it portrays is very different from that of Jane Austen -- West Wales in the Regency period was a rougher, tougher place, where there was little respect for the law and where status had to be earned, the hard way. The story is written in the form of a diary, in the words of Martha herself.