Passing Bells Trilogy by Phillip Rock [3 x Paperbacks: Good]

The Passing Bells (ISBN: 9780062229311; 516 pages) - From the well-kept lawns, rich woodlands, and gracious halls of Abingdon Pryory, from the elegant charm of summer in London's Park Lane to the devastation of Ypres and the horror of Gallipoli, this is the story of the Grevilles - two generations of a titled British family and their servants - men and women who knew their place, upstairs and down, until England went to war and the whole fabric of British society began to unravel and change. 

Circles of Time (ISBN: 9780062229335; 425 pages) - A generation has been lost on the Western Front.  The dead have been buried, a harsh peace forged, and the howl of shells replaced by the wail of saxophones as the Jazz Age begins.  But ghosts linger... that long-ago golden summer of 1914 tugging at the memory of Martin Rilke and his British cousins, the Grevilles.  From the countess to the chauffeur, the inhabitants of Abingdon Pryory seek to forget the past and adjust their lives to a new era in which old values, social codes, and sexual mores have been irretrievably swept away.  Martin Rilke throws himself into reporting, discovering unsettling political currents, as Fenton Wood-Lacy faces exile in faraway army outposts.  Back at Abingdon, Charles Greville shows signs of recovery from shell shock and Alexandra is caught up in an unlikely romance.  Circles of Time captures the age as these strongly drawn characters experience it, unfolding against England's most gracious manor house, the steamy nightclubs of London's Soho, and the despair of Germany caught in the nightmare of anarchy and inflation.  Lives are renewed, new loves found, and a future of peace and happiness is glimpsed - for the moment.

A Future Arrived (ISBN: 9780062229359; 450 pages) - The final installment of the saga of the Grevilles of Abingdon, beginning as the dizzy gaiety of the Jazz Age comes to a shattering end and concluding with German bombers coursing toward England.  The theater of this books is the '30s, a decade of change and uncertainty, as all the old guidelines are swept away.  A Future Arrived is a novel of the young, born during or just after "the war to end all wars".  They grow to young adulthood as the inheritors of the hatred spawned by the Treaty of Versailles: Derek Ramsey, born only weeks after his father fell in France; the American writer, Martin Rilke, whose family roots in scandal entwine with those of the Stanmores, but who will conquer his questionable heritage by the worldwide fame that will soon come to him; the exquisitely beautiful Wood-Lacy twins, Jennifer and Victoria, and their passionate younger sister, Kate.  In their heady youth and bittersweet growth to adulthood, they are the future-but the shadows that touched the lives of the generation before are destined to reach out to their own.