The best fantasy books set in this world with a mysterious relic (object, site, or person) from the past

Charles Williams’s books have been described as “supernatural thrillers.” Many later authors have tried to use the theme of a recently-rediscovered ancient holy relic, which various people want to get hold of for good or evil purposes, in this case the Holy Grail or Graal, but few have done it as well as Charles Williams. I’ve read it at least five times, and I also think it has one of the most attention-grabbing opening lines in fiction: “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.”

The 12-year-old son of a friend recommended this book to me, and his judgment was spot-on. Colin and Susan (aged about 11) spend their holidays with Gowther and Bess Mossock on a farm near Alderley Edge, in Cheshire. A strange woman, Selina Place, accosts them and causes the stone in a bracelet Susan wears to change colour. It seems that the bracelet has magical properties, and Cadellin Silverbrow, a wizard who guards a troop of sleeping knights in a cavern under The Edge explains that it could be used to wake up the knights before they are needed. Selina Place and her coven of witches are determined to get hold of Susan’s stone for their own purposes, and in a thrilling chase across country the children meet many characters from Norse and Celtic mythology, both good and evil, It also has the all-time scariest underground tunnel sequence of any book I have ever read. 

Mark Studdock, a young weak-minded but ambitious academic, wants to get into the inner circle of the college where he teaches, and when he is offered a job at a prestigious research institute he eagerly grabs it, but does not realise that he was offered the job simply as a way of getting at his wife Jane, whose role was much more important, but little understood by the institute or by Mark. The institute has its own inner circle, who are also after power, but a supernatural power that they fail to understand and try to explain in scientific terms. Eventually the powers do come among them, with results that none of them expected. This is the third book of a trilogy, though it can be read on its own. The other two books are set on other planets. I have read this one at least six times, and each time it has had something to say about the time when I read it. In the 1970s it seemed to be about the demonic power of the military-industrial complex. Later, when I worked at a university, I thought its portrayal of the rivalries and petty ambitions of academics was brilliant.  

The Revd Merrily Watkins is the Vicar of Ledwardine in Herefordshire, England. When the diocesan exorcist retires, she is nominated to replace him. I studied theology at a college in Durham that trained clergy for the Church of England, and I liked Phil Rickman’s gently satirical touch. In the book, the church prefers the more twee title of “deliverance consultant” in place of the more blunt “exorcist.” I don’t know if any Church of England diocese has done such a thing, but it’s the kind of thing one could easily imagine that they might do. But whether she is an exorcist or a deliverance consultant, Merrily Watkins is soon faced with problems such as the missing relics of a saint and some occult conspiracies. I also think it comes close to being a successor to the novels of Charles Williams as a “supernatural thriller.”

This is Stephen King’s zombie story, and I think it is the best of all his novels that I have read. I like the gradual build-up of menace in the story. Like the other books mentioned, there is supernatural evil, but unlike them, there are no occult conspiracies, the evil flows from human choices. It tells something about the nature of temptation, and one wants to warn the characters “Don’t do it. No good can come of this.” But they do it anyway, and no good comes of it.