 Flood by Hilary Mantell, narrated by Gordon Griffin. 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 Featherhouten 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 neighbors, 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, mightily 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 Wednesday the bishop came in person. He was a modern prelate, brisk and plump in his rimless glasses, and he liked nothing better than to tear around the diocese in his big black car. He had taken the precaution, advisable in the circumstances, of announcing himself two hours before his arrival. The telephone bell ringing in the hall of the parish priest's house had in itself a muted ecclesiastical tone. Miss Dempsey heard it, as she was coming from the kitchen. She stood looking at the telephone for a moment, and then approached it gingerly, walking on the balls of her feet. She lifted the receiver as if it were hot. Her head on one side, holding the earpiece well away from her cheek, she listened to the message given by the bishop's secretary. Yes, my lord, she murmured. Though in retrospect, she knew that the secretary did not merit this. The bishop and his sycophants, Father Angwin always said. Sample complete. Ready to continue?