Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Medieval

Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe.

1454: King Henry VI has remained all but exiled in Windsor Castle, struck down by his illness for over a year, his eyes vacant, his mind a blank. His fiercely loyal wife and Queen, Margaret of Anjou, safeguards her husband's interests, hoping that her son Edward will one day know the love of his father. Richard Duke of York, Protector of the Realm, extends his influence throughout the kingdom with each month that Henry slumbers.

This story is set at the end of the 10th century and charts the journey of a young warrior, whose father, Bersi, is killed during a raid on Wessex. Sven Bersisson has to grow up quickly and to follow in his father’s footsteps. Sweyn Skull Taker, his uncle, becomes his foster father and they raid Wessex and Frankia, where the young warrior becomes a man. King Sweyn Forkbeard, the king of Denmark, uses their clan to help in his dream of defeating the Norwegians and then taking the throne of England.

Alan, the beadle of the manor of Bampton, had gone out at dusk to seek those who might violate curfew. When, the following morning, he had not returned home, his young wife Matilda had sought out Master Hugh de Singleton, surgeon and bailiff of the manor. Two days later Alan’s corpse was discovered in the hedge, at the side of the track to St. Andrew’s Chapel. His throat had been torn out - his head was half severed from his body - and his face, hands, and forearms were lacerated with deep scratches.

Bound together by a single ancient text, the unforgettable characters of Cloud Cuckoo Land are dreamers and outsiders figuring out the world around them: 13-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril.

When Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor declares war on the pagans of Denmark, Pomerania and the Baltic lands, he is unaware of the true might of the storm he is about to unleash. Meanwhile, in a small fjord in the north of Norway, a young Norse warrior is about to embark on a journey that will take him far to the south, beyond the land of the Angles and the Franks.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the listener in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves.

Truth. Justice. Revenge. Behind these stands The Scotsman's Sword. When Lor Careston's quiet Highland village was attacked and burned, he felt helpless against the raiders who destroyed his home. Seeking revenge, but lacking the fighting skills he needs to execute his mission, he sets out to find the Ludus Caledonia - a mysterious fight guild that turns men into warriors. Lor trains hard, proves himself in the ring, and earns a place with the very clan that decimated his home, having decided to set his plan for revenge in motion from inside the clan.

A grand tournament is about to begin, and the excitement grows as King Edward III joins the festivities at Mablethorpe Castle. Meanwhile, Lady Vivienne Harlowe's past comes back to haunt her, and she will do anything to find answers to the questions that have plagued her for the past seven years regarding her parents' unsolved murders. Meeting the king is nerve-wracking, but he is the only one who might be able to shed light on her nightmarish quandary.

Rome: Father Asser is waiting to die. His idealism has landed him in a papal prison on false charges of heresy, but then salvation arrives in an unexpected form. Cardinal Balotelli also dreams of a better Europe, free from the ravages of the Norlanders. He has an important job for Asser, one that will take him home to Wessex. Wessex: King Aethelwolf's power is fading, but none of his feckless children are fit to rule. His eldest sons would rather fight each other than the blood-thirsty Norlander invaders. His daughter, Swift, is clever and cunning, but sometimes blinded by her ambition.

January 1474, in the deep cold of an ice-bound Danzig: a man is spending a frivolous winter not facing up to his responsibilities.... It is the merchant Niccolo, diviner, soldier, banker to kings; shunned by all who know him after revelations of his murderous mischief-making. But his talents are too great to be squandered, and a subtle political dance ensues as rivals in Poland, Venice, and Persia bid for his services in trade and war and diplomacy. Niccolo has lost his family, but he will discover a new purpose in life....

Hrald, Jarl of Four Stones, has forfeited the golden treasure of his wife, Pega, the richest heiress in Mercia. The shrewd and powerful Lady Æthelflaed, daughter of Ælfred, King of Wessex, knows just what to do with that gold, and with the young woman to whom it belongs. She moves with swift decision. Hrald must undertake a startling penance for the harm he has caused. The one reward at the end will be his right to again wed Dagmar, the daughter of the late King of the Danes in Angle-land. If he survives.

Set in the turbulent times of 12th century England where civil war, famine, religious strife, and battles over royal succession tore lives and families apart, The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the building of a magnificent cathedral. Against this richly imagined backdrop, filled with intrigue and treachery, Ken Follett draws the reader irresistibly into a wonderful epic of family drama, violent conflict, and unswerving ambition.

July 1346. The Hundred Years' War has begun, and King Edward and his lords are on the march through France. But this war belongs to the men on the ground. Swept up in the bloody chaos, a tight-knit company from Essex must stay alive long enough to see their home again. With sword, mace and longbow, the Essex Dogs will fight, from the landing beaches of Normandy to the bloodsoaked field of Crécy.

March, AD 773. Bjarki Bloodhand is now Fire Born - a legendary berserker inhabited by the ferocious spirit of a bear in battle. Yet he has sworn never again to allow that sacred rage to possess him, lest he for ever lose himself in the madness like his father. Tor Hildarsdottir yearns to save pagan Saxony from the grip of the Christian Franks, who now occupy half the region. But she also has serious problems closer to home with her fast-growing pet bear cub, Garm, and, worse, she seems to be falling in love.

Poitiers was in the past, but it changed the life of Sir John Hawkwood, for he gained his spurs and that was another step on his journey. Once he realised that he had more ambition than just to serve the king of England, he joined forces with Albert Sterz and formed a company of mercenaries who hired out their swords. Fighting for the king of England against Burgundy, they gained a reputation which made others both fear and hate them in equal measure.

1589. Princess Anna of Denmark is betrothed to King James VI of Scotland. Before they can wed, Anna must pass the trial period: one year of marriage to prove herself worthy of being Scotland's new Queen. Determined to fulfil her duties to King and country, Anna resolves to be the perfect royal bride. Until she meets Lord Henry . . . By her side is Kirsten Sorenson, her loyal and pious lady-in-waiting. But, whilst tending to Anna's every need, Kirsten has her own secret motives for the royal marriage to succeed . . .

The Red Queen tells the story of the child-bride of Edmund Tudor, who, although widowed in her early teens, uses her determination of character and wily plotting to infiltrate the house of York under the guise of loyal friend and servant, undermine the support for Richard III and ultimately ensure that her only son, Henry Tudor, triumphs as King of England.

Ceric, beset with madness from the trauma of the losses he has suffered, wanders the forests of Kilton. An urgent need to stave off the hunger of his folk calls his younger brother Edwin, Lord of Kilton, to the kingdom of Mercia, and though he fulfils his mission, finds the greater prize he sought out of reach. Four Stones now has the second son of Sidroc under its lofty roof—Yrling, come from Gotland to train under the hand of his half-brother Hrald.

When Adrianna arrives at the small, run-down cottage, near the sea in rural Norfolk, she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Here she can forget her life in the city, and the problems she’s left behind there, at least for a while. But – like Adrianna herself – the cottage holds secrets. And when Adrianna finds a mysterious bundle of notes hidden under a floorboard, she can’t shake the idea that they’ve been waiting for her. Especially when – in the rambling, overgrown garden – she then finds a strangely-carved stone, drawing her into a centuries-old mystery…