D. Morgan

Ezra Toth is your typical sword for hire. A dark past, a few secrets, a talent for killing, with a sharp sword and sharper wit. He returns from an ordinary, arduous job to find representatives of the crown waiting for him at his home - not so typical. They bring him to the crown prince who has a problem only Ezra can solve. Crown Prince Christophe's brother, and possibly even the king himself, are part of a plot to assassinate him. With no idea who in the palace is truly loyal to who, Ezra must navigate a myriad of potential suspects whilst protecting the heir.

In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment. He explains what constitutes an empire and offers suggestions about what empires of the past can tell us about our own historical moment. Parsons uses imperial examples that stretch from ancient Rome, to Britain's "new" imperialism in Kenya, to the Third Reich to parse the features common to all empires, their evolutions and self-justifying myths, and the reasons for their inevitable decline.