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Susan Howatch's dark, epic family saga is a must-read for fans of Winston Graham's Poldark

We all want what we cannot have, but when Mark Castallack sees his longed-for inheritance Penmarric, a gothic mansion on the bleak cliffs of Cornwall, and the mysterious, mesmerising Janna, he knows that he will make them his and nothing will stand in his way.

Yet when Mark realizes his dreams, Penmarric only brings a legacy of conflict, jealousy, infidelity and betrayal. Spanning the Victorian era to the Second World War, this gripping story of one man and his two feuding families chronicles the tempestuous clashes between warring sons, wives and mistresses, and between a house divided against itself. The story begins with Mark, a rather dour man, who falls in love with Janna, a woman several years his senior. These are the two central figures of the novel, which later moves on to the next generation. Howatch proves herself to be a master storyteller with the ability to get under the skin of her characters in such a way that the reader can identify with them completely - a very rare talent. Her multi-character first-person structure enables us to see the unfolding story through the eyes of five characters in turn, and it is quite amazing how a character whom one has disliked when he or she was seen through the eyes of previous narrator suddenly takes on completely new dimensions when he/she comes on central stage. I know of no writer who does this as well as Howatch. The story is set in Cornwall and begins in 1890 and goes on to span the intervening years till WWII.