Ancient Mystery Fiction

In the dark of night, a covert group of bandits enters the village of Rekeem and kidnaps Rasha, daughter of the great Abdali-ud-din leader, Zafir. They seek a hefty ransom, and know Zafir will sacrifice everything to win back the safety of his beloved daughter. But it's not just Zafir who wants to find her. Bassam, Zafir's young protégé in the caravans, is deeply in love with Rasha. And he will let nothing stop him from finding her - even a perilous journey - even death.

Indie Blackwood is a popular cheerleader with a football-star boyfriend. On the surface, her life looks perfect. But when a guy dies right before her eyes and an ancient family Bible is stolen, Indie's world spirals into darkness. Turns out, Indie has a destiny. And it involves much more than pom-poms and parties. If she doesn't get the Bible back, every witch on the planet will die. And that's seriously bad news for Indie, because according to Bishop, the hot warlock who has an uncanny knowledge of everything that matters, she's a witch, too.

Caesar and Brutus. Marius and Sulla. Cicero, Antony, Clodius, and Augustus. The end of the Roman Republic gave us a host of larger-than-life characters hailing from Rome. Only one was named Great. In the year 90 B.C.E., chaos and unrest erupts across the Italian peninsula. Rome's allies have rebelled and taken up arms against the most powerful military on Earth. Leading Rome's legions - and his only son - to the city's defense, an unproven and unloved commander will taste victory and defeat outside the capital's gates.

Throughout their married lives, baseball star Gaspar Bethlen's wife gave him a lovingly crafted mystery every year for Christmas. Solving the clues led him to his present, but the mysteries themselves were the true gift. Now, Beth has died, leaving Gasper a wreck of a man. But Beth left behind a clue, the beginning of one final Christmas mystery, and it's much more than either of them expected.

428 BCE. Athens is roiling with intrigue about Pericles’ successor. Were it days ago, Timarcus would be at its center. But Kore has unexpectedly returned to him after seven years of separation and he is once again besotted. But as quickly as she has returned, she is gone, struck down by Apollo’s gentle arrow. Yet if it was a natural death, why can he not feel her presence as his beliefs promise?

For a millennium, Jerusalem's Temple Mount has been at the center of war and death. Theres never been a time when blood wasnt spilled upon this ancient, sacred site. Flash forward to present-day Jerusalem, where 35-year-old Israeli counterterrorism agent Sam Deker has just thwarted the most recent act of violence, an attempt by radical Palestinians to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque and pin the blame on right-wing Orthodox Jews.

Bored with his life as a farm hand, Storm accepts a request to be a messenger boy for a local astronomer. Little does he know his world will be blown apart when he reaches the Capital. Intercepted and befriended by a strange giant of a man who is ensconced under the nation's government buildings, he learns an awful truth--the world has just months before it falls under the magnetic pull of the Dark Star, the invisible binary twin to the sun. Storm learns the resulting pole shift will change the face of the globe, causing mass devastation. But the Dark Star has swept the planet clean before ...

Bringing ancient myth to life with passion, humour and humanity, Lindsay Clarke vividly retells the story of Troy and of the heroes who fought there in the third instalment of the Troy Quartet. Troy has fallen. After 10 years of fighting and a savage final massacre, the victors quarrel over what remains and turn their minds to home. Menelaus must decide the fate of Helen, whose incomparable beauty ignited the war. And Agamemnon must return to the fury of Clytaemnestra, who has neither forgotten nor forgiven his choice to sacrifice their daughter.

As a boy, Nero's royal heritage becomes a threat to his very life, first when the mad emperor Caligula tries to drown him, then when his great aunt attempts to secure her own son's inheritance. Faced with shocking acts of treachery, young Nero is dealt a harsh lesson - it is better to be cruel than dead. While Nero idealises the artistic and athletic principles of Greece, his very survival rests on his ability to navigate the sea of vipers that is Rome. Most lethal of all is his own mother, Agrippina, whose only goal is to control the empire.

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark. But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead. His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone.

While the man called Nikolas continues his violent murder spree, Maria comes to Peter's rescue in Sicily. New clues found by Don Luigi require Peter...

Cole and Stella have lived in Costa Rica for the last seven years. They wanted to believe that it was really over...but there were always doubts. And when Stella sees a horrifying vision in the jungle, she's certain that the Ancient Enemy has returned. David, living at his aunt's house in New Mexico, knows the Ancient Enemy is back; he can feel it. And now nightmares about a serial killer possessed by the Ancient Enemy plague him, a killer who will stop at nothing, a killer who is coming for David.

Ancient Thebes, 335 BC. Alexander savagely crushes the Theban revolt against his rule. Swearing revenge for their once glorious city, Dimitrios, a captain of the Theban army, physician Klemes, and soldier Ari join General Memnon in Asia Minor to fight against Alexander as he sets off to conquer the Persian Empire.

History awaits an unsuspecting young man, fleeing the imperial capital and Nero's wrath. Arriving in Pompeii, Marcellus witnesses the funeral of a local man; the course of his life will be altered by this stranger's death. Unable to stop the murder of a mysterious woman named Helen, Marcellus becomes the caretaker of the dead woman's newborn baby. Hiding in plain sight at a brothel, Marcellus is left to decipher Helen's secrets. With the help of his overbearing servant and a seductive oracle, Marcellus must deduce who in Pompeii has blood on their hands.

Nell Valenti is settling into her role of transforming the Villa Orlandini into a superb farm-to-table cooking school, and the time has finally come for a full taste test run. But when Chef Orlandini prepares to reveal his top secret marinara recipe for the first time to a group of American gastro-tourists, Nell realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew.

AD 312 is a year of horrific and brutal warfare. Constantine's northern army is a small force, plagued by religious rivalries, but seemingly unstoppable as they invade Maxentius' Italian heartlands. These relentless clashes, incidents of treachery and twists of fortune see Maxentius' armies driven back to Rome.

Exploration of the lunar Van der Waals crater for sources of rare earth metals is unexpectedly stopped when an object is discovered; and it’s not man made. An international team of experts lead by geologist Jake Mackenzie must determine whether this poses a threat to Earth or is a harbinger of an alien presence. Set in the decade starting in 2075, this exciting adventure leads us down a path of discovery and challenges, changing our understanding of Earth’s evolution and ultimately the course of human history.

On the banks of the Nile, a hero will rise. Across the lush plains of Egypt, Taita, a freed eunuch slave, wears his authority lightly. Not only is he the close advisor to the Pharaoh, but he is guardian to Pharaoh Tamose's two teenage sisters, the young beauties Tehuti and Bekatha. But the kingdom is not at peace. They have been fighting Southern Egypt's constant and historic enemy, the Hyksos people in the north, since time began. To finally crush them, Pharaoh must turn to his most trusted friend.

When a group of young archaeologists stumbles upon mysterious inscriptions deep within an ancient ruin, they uncover a lost language that holds the key to a forgotten civilization. As they work to decipher cryptic symbols and hidden messages, they soon realize that their discovery is more than just history—it’s magic. With each new clue, they awaken long-dormant forces, face magical trials, and race against time to prevent an ancient power from falling into the wrong hands.

Once there was a time when Romagna was named Flaminia and the Rubicon was not only a river. When Julius Caesar arrived in 49 BCE, he found waiting for him a wooden palisade colored ruby red where he deployed his legions for several months on that border defended by the legionaries of Pompey. But who built, even before Caesar was born, and for what reason was a red line of defense built stretching out to the sea, and what would Caesar and his legions do to breach it?