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Reviews

Reviews

by C. W. Gortner - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized 15th-century Renaissance Italy, and Lucrezia Borgia, beloved daughter of the pope, was at the center of the dynasty’s ambitions. Slandered as a heartless seductress who lured men to their doom, was she in fact the villainess of legend, or was she trapped in a familial web, forced to choose between loyalty and survival? THE VATICAN PRINCESS is the first novel to describe Lucrezia’s coming-of-age in her own voice.

by Paul M.M. Cooper - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In 13th-century Sri Lanka, Asanka, poet to the king, lives a life of luxury, enjoying courtly life and a sweet, furtive love affair with a palace servant, a village girl he is teaching to write. But when Magha, a prince from the mainland, usurps the throne, Asanka's role as court poet dramatically alters. Although a cruel and calculating king, Magha --- a lover of poetry --- commissions Asanka to translate a holy Sanskrit epic into the Tamil language spoken by his recently acquired subjects. The poem will be an olive branch --- a symbol of unity between the two cultures. But in different languages, in different contexts, meaning can become slippery.

written by Oliver Pötzsch, translated by Lee Chadeayne - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

In 1668, hangman Jakob Kuisl, his daughter Magdalena, and her husband Simon travel to the town of Bamberg. But what was planned as a family vacation soon becomes a nightmare: a murderer in Bamberg is leaving the severed limbs of victims in the trash outside the city. When rumors quickly spread that the deaths are the work of a werewolf, Jakob must prove the superstition wrong and embarks on a search for the “devil of Bamberg.”

by Sophie Perinot - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Eager to be an obedient daughter, Princess Margot accepts her role as a marriage pawn, even as she is charmed by the powerful, charismatic Duc de Guise. Though Margot's heart belongs to Guise, her hand will be offered to Henri of Navarre, a Huguenot leader and a notorious heretic looking to seal a tenuous truce. But the promised peace is a mirage: her mother's schemes are endless, and her brothers plot vengeance in the streets of Paris. When Margot's wedding devolves into the bloodshed of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, she will be forced to choose between her family and her soul.

by Mary Beard - History, Nonfiction

Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty.

by Erin Lindsey - Fantasy, Fiction

When the war between Alden and Oridia began, Lady Alix Black played a minor role, scouting at the edge of the king’s retinue in relative anonymity. Though she’s once again facing an attacking Oridian force determined to destroy all she holds dear, she is now bodyguard to the king and wife to the prince. Erik is willing to take drastic measures to defend his domain, even if it means sending Prince Liam into a deadly web of intrigue and traveling into the perilous wild lands of Harram himself. Only the biggest threat to the kingdom might be one that neither Alix nor Erik could have imagined or prepared for.

by Steven Saylor - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

In 88 B.C., it seems as if the entire ancient world is at war. The young Gordianus has been waiting out the chaos in Alexandria with Bethesda when he gets a cryptic message from his former tutor and friend, Antipater. Now in Ephesus, as part of Mithridates' entourage, Antipater seems to think that his life is in imminent danger. To rescue him, Gordianus concocts a daring, even foolhardy, scheme to go "behind enemy lines" and bring Antipater to safety. But there are powerful and deadly forces at work here that have their own plans for Gordianus.

by Zen Cho - Adventure, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction

The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers has long been tasked with maintaining magic within His Majesty’s lands. Lately, though, the once proper institute has fallen into disgrace. At his wit’s end, Zacharias Wythe, Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers, ventures to the border of Fairyland to discover why England’s magical stocks are drying up. But when his adventure brings him in contact with a most unusual comrade, a woman with immense power and an unfathomable gift, he sets on a path that will alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain --- and the world at large.

by Rhys Bowen - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Caught between her high birth and empty purse, Lady Georgiana Ranoch is glad to get a new assignment from the Queen --- especially one that includes lodging in the supposedly haunted Kensington Palace. As companion to Princess Marina of Greece, who is to marry the King’s youngest son, Georgie expects to live the high life --- until she stumbles across a dead body.

by W. Bruce Cameron - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Thirty thousand years ago, ice was storming the planet. No stranger to the experiences that make us human, our ancestors competed for scant resources in a brutal landscape. Mankind stood on the cold brink of extinction...but they had a unique advantage over other species, a new technology: domesticated wolves. Only a set of extraordinary circumstances could have transformed one of these fierce creatures into a hunting companion, a bodyguard, a soldier and a friend.