The Snake Pit (36 page)

Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-475299-0

THE MISTRESS OF HUSABY
Volume II

Volume II,
The Mistress of Husaby
, tells of Kristin’s troubled and eventful married life on the great estate of Husaby, to which her husband has taken her.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-75293-8

THE CROSS
Volume III

Volume III,
The Cross
, shows Kristin still indomitable, reconstructing her world after the devastation of the Black Death and the loss of almost everything that she has loved.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-394-75291-4

The Master of Hestviken Series

THE AXE
Volume I

Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas,
The Axe
is the first volume in Sigrid Undset’s epic tetralogy,
The Master of Hestviken
. In it we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. Now, in the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75273-8

THE SNAKE PIT
Volume II

Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter became lovers when they were barely beyond childhood and endured a long and bitter separation before they could wed. Now they are beginning what each hopes will be a new life—but in Ingunn’s past lies the shame of an illegitimate child and in Olav’s past lies murder. And the guilt they carry may prove more destructive of their happiness than all the years they spent as outcasts. In conveying both the emotional immediacy of Olav and Ingunn’s love and the epic sweep of their story,
The Snake Pit
is a masterly recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75554-8

IN THE WILDERNESS
Volume III

In the third volume of her medieval epic, Sigrid Undset plunges readers into a world that is at once profoundly alien yet inhabited by men and women as recognizable as our own kin. Heartbroken by the death of his wife and estranged from a son who may not be his, Olav leaves Hestviken on a journey of adventure, temptation, and remorse that leads him to a bloody reckoning at the gates of Oslo. Vividly, poignantly, and with the fierce grandeur of a Norse folktale,
In the Wilderness
portrays the terrible conflicts of a man who is both sinner and penitent in an age that lies on the cusp of savagery and faith.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75553-1

THE SON AVENGER
Volume IV

As a young man Olav Audunsson committed two murders for love. Now he has outlived his enemies and the woman he killed for. But in the last years of his life, Olav must watch his grown children—and particularly his rebellious son Erik—reenact the sins of his youth, with even more fearful consequences. Powerfully written and filled with magnificent vignettes of the daily life of a medieval estate,
The Son Avenger
suggests a Greek tragedy whose vision of fate coexists with a Christian sense of suffering and forgiveness.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75552-4

VINTAGE BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com