Roger Norman (born 1948) is an English novelist living in Turkey. He was educated at Sherborne School and Cambridge University. He founded Booklore, The Sherborne Bookshop, and in the course of his life he has lived and worked in Greece as an olive farmer, been features Editor of the English-language Turkish Daily News in Ankara, taught in several universities, and served as a consultant on missions for several United Nations agencies examining agriculture and economic development. His fiction continues the English tradition begun by John Masefield and John Cowper Powys, in which an undercurrent of supernatural fantasy or even mildly occult events interacts with characters in a modern British setting.

ALBION'S DREAM. Edward Yeoman and his cousin John Hadley begin to play an ancient, handmade game called Albion's Dream without realizing, at first, that events they set in motion on the board are also transpiring, in parallel, in real life. The first clue comes when Edward notices that faces on the game cards resemble actual people, particularly his tyrannical headmaster, Tyson. Still, both boys feel compelled to play on. When the game falls into the hands of Tyson and the unfortunately named Dr. Fell, the boys are accused of occult practices and threatened with expulsion. In a riveting denouement, Edward is proven innocent and Tyson is replaced--exactly the outcome for which the boys had played. Although the author clearly sets forth the struggle between good and evil, his best storytelling is in the gray areas between such extremes: Edward's capacity for the dark arises from ordinary boyish wishes. Moving handily between board action and school scenes, Norman masterfully manipulates a large number of characters, locations, and ideas.

RED DIE. In October 1916, Lance-Corporal Jack Yeoman arrives back in England from the trenches of the Western Front. Guided in his movements by a pair of unusual dice he carries with him, he returns to his home in deepest Dorset and arranges a secret rendezvous with his adoptive sister Maggie at a village pub. But his recklessness in word and deed soon land him in trouble and he finds himself a hunted man. His war-wounded brother, an embittered stone-builder, the vindictive local squire, and a sinister priest – all have their reasons for pursuing Jack as he flees deeper into the heart of his native land and deeper into the mystery that envelops him.

Several others are drawn into his sphere through the roll of the dice, some of whom are more than they seem. But there are other forces at work in this haunting tale of reality and illusion, of the living and the dead, a tale of natural potions and supernatural powers in which the threads of human destiny unravel and intertwine. As Jack seeks to come to terms with his conflicting loyalties and beliefs, with the death of his father, with his love for Maggie, events build to their violent climax on All Hallow's Eve on Giant Hill at Cerne Abbas.

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