Medieval History

Autumn, southern France, 1243: Days ago, the botanist and her students fled from Crusaders attacking their village, but now they must seek shelter from the punishing wind. Searching on her own, Renata hears voices and more visions come—no, those are real, but they aren’t really witches, are they? Why do strangers here seem so familiar? Their party seem safe enough in this shelter . . . for now. But what of their families, and any other survivors from their village? And what of the quest of Sir Simon, their lone protector? Will he save them, or give them into the hands of the Inquisitor ...

Nowhere else in Britain in the modern era, or indeed in Europe, did civil order break down over such a wide area, or for such a long time, as on the border country between Scotland and England. For more than a century, the hoofbeats of countless raiding parties drummed over the border. From Dumfriesshire to the high wastes of East Cumbria, from Roxburghshire to Redesdale, from the lonely valley of Liddesdale to the fortress city of Carlisle, swords and spears spoke while the law remained silent

The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life. While much attention has been given to his short reign, Michael Hicks explores the whole of Richard's fascinating life and traces the unfolding of his character and career from his early years as the son of a duke to his violent death at the battle of Bosworth.

The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they founded - the Franks, the Lombards, the Angles, the Saxons and the Alemanni - the Goths simply disappeared. The subject of Henry Bradley's splendid short history is tracing the rise, the migrations, and the impact of the Goths on European history along with their spectacular fall.

The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean....

Young and beautiful Gytha Godwinson is the envy of England when her father Harold seizes the country’s crown in early 1066. But soon, treachery tears her house apart and triumph turns to terror. An evil star appears, heralding the end of an era and a new beginning for Britain. Her family and the country seem cursed. Yet even as she suffers loss, betrayal and humiliation, Gytha is determined to regain what is rightfully hers. A female retelling of the dramatic and heart-wrenching events of the slaughter-stained year of 1066: from the ashes of her father's cursed kingdom, one woman makes a ...

In the best-selling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, author Patrick Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short-term.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob.

From William Shakespeare’s series of history dramas, to Sir Walter Scott, and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—not to mention the smash-hit TV show Game of Thrones—the British civil war of 1455 to 1485 has inspired writers for centuries. Ed West’s My Kingdom for a Horse illuminates the bloody war fought for thirty long years between the descendants of King Edward III in a battle for the throne.

Beginning with the death of Edward I in 1307 and ending with the deposition of Richard II in 1399, Sceptred Isle follows the experiences of the last Plantagenets, uncovering lesser-known voices and untold stories along the way. Through the epic drama of regicide, war, the prolonged spectre of the Black Death, religious antagonism, revolt and the end of a royal dynasty, we encounter a fractured monarchy, the birth of the struggle between Europeanism and nationalism, social rebellion and a global pandemic.

A one-eyed old man, with a gray cloak and a wide-brimmed hat leaning on a staff. A wanderer who appears when least expected, bringing triumph or doom. The god of prophecy, poetry and fate. A shape changer. A sorcerer. The god Odin cuts a dramatic figure in Norse mythology and is still a part of the popular imagination. He is the inspiration for figures like J.R.R. Tolkien's Gandalf the Grey, and he still appears in modern literature as varied as Marvel Comics and Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods.

This is a special introductory offer to acquaint readers with Martin Archer's exciting and action-packed stories about medieval England. They are great reads. This is the first book in Martin Archer's great action-packed saga of Cornwall's Company of Archers at the dawn of Britain's rise to military supremacy and the beginning of its great merchant companies. Arrows fly, swords clash, nobles and church men are gulled out of their coins, and the French and Venetians are successfully blamed for things they did not do. This is one of the many books in Martin Archer's exciting and action-packed...

Best-selling author David Elliott explores how Joan of Arc changed the course of history and remains a figure of fascination centuries after her extraordinary life and death. Joan of Arc gets the Hamilton treatment in this evocative novel. Told through medieval poetic forms and in the voices of the people and objects in Joan of Arc's life (including her family and even the trees, clothes, cows, and candles of her childhood), Voices offers an unforgettable perspective on an extraordinary young woman.

As the Christian hold on the Holy Land crumbles, Templar Knight, Salvatore and his leader, the Mason fight to defend the ancient city of Acre. They have a duty to defend their last bastion in the region and to defend a mysterious artifact whose very existence cannot be revealed to the man tasked with its safety. In today's world. Peter Sparke and Professor Tilly Pink take on the challenge of uncovering the fate of the fabled Silver Scroll, unsure whether it even exits.

Young Duncan M'Kethe finds himself caught in the web of Sir James Turner, the former Covenanter turned military leader of the persecutors. Duncan is torn by his hatred of Turner's dragoons, who have treated his friends cruelly, and his father's instructions to love them. He must be true to Jesus Christ while attempting to rescue his father from enemy hands.

During the Black Death in the 14th century, plague doctors wore creepy beaked masks filled with herbs. RIGHT? WRONG! Those masks were from a plague outbreak centuries later—and most doctors never wore anything like that at all!

Empire of the Normans tells the extraordinary story of how the descendants of Viking marauders in northern France came to dominate European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern politics. It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce pirates, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. Across the generations, the Normans made their influence felt across Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and even to the Holy Land, with a combination of military might, political savvy, deeply held religious beliefs, and a profound sense of their own destiny.

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.

The Crusades are the prototype and epitome of the Holy War. The fight to take control of the city of Jerusalem, believed to be the most sacred Holy City to two distinct religions of Christianity and Islam, has lasted far longer than the two centuries of the Crusades, and its reach has extended far further than Europe and the Middle East.