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
James McGee (author) renegade French generals who are attempting to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte. The plot is centred on the attempted coup, which became known as the Malet Conspiracy. McGee's novels have been generally well received by the critics. The period detail, likeable hero and fast-paced-action have commended the books to many reviewers. Authors Reginald Hill and Andrew Taylor have also praised the novels. James McGee (author) James McGee is an English novelist known for his historical adventure novels about a fictional Bow Street Runner, Matthew Hawkwood. James McGee was born in Kent, but, as an army child, spent his childhood in Gibraltar, Germany