Ken Follett · 2007 · overland

Ken Follett's 2007 sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, set in the same cathedral town two hundred years later. Four children witness a killing in the woods in 1327, and the consequences run through their lives - a bridge, a war in France, and the arrival of a plague that kills between a third and a half of everyone in the town.

1. 1
   Kingsbridge

   In the priory town four children see a knight kill two men-at-arms in the forest, and the secret binds them for fifty years - during which one becomes a builder, one a nun and physician, one a wool merchant and one a soldier.

2. 2
   Crecy

   The war in France takes the soldier to Crecy, where English archery destroys the French nobility on a hillside - and Follett uses the campaign to show the same economy and the same cruelties operating away from the town.

3. 3
   Calais

   The siege of Calais drags for eleven months, and the army that comes home from it brings back more than plunder - the plague having already begun moving north through France ahead of the ships.

4. 4
   Kingsbridge

   The Black Death reaches Kingsbridge and takes something between a third and a half of everyone in it - and the book's real subject is what a town does afterwards, with the labour gone and the old rules unenforceable.