John Cowper Powys Thomas Hardy, and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset, part of Hardy's mythical Wessex. American scholar Richard Maxwell describes these four novels "as remarkably successful with the reading public of his time". "Maiden Castle", the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which he intended to be a "rival" to Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge". All the same, despite his indebtedness to the Victorian novel and his enthusiasm for Hardy and Walter Scott, as well as for lesser figures such as Ainsworth, Powys was clearly a modernist, and has affinities also with Fyodor
Kate Ellis (author) Kate Ellis (author) Kate Ellis is a British author of crime fiction, best known for a series of detective novels, which blends history with mystery, featuring policeman Wesley Peterson. Ellis' first novel, "The Merchant's House", published in 1998, received positive reviews and was chosen as one of the ten best summer reads by "Woman's Weekly". She has since written 21 more novels in this series, many to critical acclaim. Ellis has also written five novels set in Yorkshire as part of the Joe Plantagenet series and an historical crime novel, "The Devil's Priest", which is set in 16th century Liverpool.