 Recorded books and one-click digital present Flood by Hilary Mantell, narrated by Gordon Griffin One-click digital provides free audiobook downloads in partnership with thousands of public libraries. To see if one-click digital's extensive catalogue is available to you, visit your library's website. And now, Flood. Feather Houghton is a dreary town in 1950s northern England. Father Angwin has lost his faith. Sister Philomena strains against convent life. The inhabitants of the town go about their lives in a haze. Then a stranger appears, bringing with him the hint of something new. But who is Flood? An angel come to shake the dwellers from their stupor? Or is he the devil himself? A wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart? The author begins with the following notes. The church in this story bears some but not much resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church in the real world, circa 1956. The village of Feather Houghton is not to be found on a map. The real Flood, 1574 to 1637, was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition, a description that is symbolic and fantastical. You are familiar, no doubt, with Sebastiano del Piambo's huge painting The Raising of Lazarus, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people, presumably the neighbours, cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. His grave clothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously and seem to confer. What he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly sensorious. Here, in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud, one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman, Mary or maybe Martha, is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the Revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched. So many rounds down, five to go. And now, Flood. Chapter 1, On Web... Sample complete. Ready to continue?