Everyone knows the story-how Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, how Camelot came to be, and about the power struggles that ultimately destroyed Arthur's dreams. But what of the time before Arthur and the forces that created him?

England, 1346: For Thomas Blackstone, the choice is easy - dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king's invasion. As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone learns the brutal lessons of war - from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare.

Only a fool would venture into the soul-stealing mists. That’s exactly where Odin is going. Along with blood-brother Loki, he hunts the frost giant who murdered his father. Caught between the machinations of Loki and a goddess, Odin is drawn into a world of sorcerers, trolls, and terrible secrets. Before he’s done, Midgard will drown in blood.

Eighteen-year-old James Douglas can only watch, helpless, as the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace is hanged, drawn, and quartered. Even under the heel of a brutal English conqueror, James' blood-drenched homeland may still have one hope for freedom, the rightful king of the Scots, Robert the Bruce. James swears fealty to the man he believes can lead the fight against English tyranny. The Bruce is soon a fugitive, king in name and nothing more. Scotland is occupied, the Scottish resistance crushed. Yet James believes their cause is not lost.

This lush novel, set in 1766 England and America, evokes an era ripe with riot and revolution, from the teeming streets of London to the sprawling grounds of a Virginia plantation. Mack McAsh burns with the desire to escape his life of slavery in Scottish coal mines while Lizzie Hallim is desperate to shed a life of sheltered subjugation to her spineless husband. United in America, their only chance for freedom lies beyond the Western frontier - if they're brave enough to take it.

A young Saxon boy and his mother are captured in a Viking raid. Fate transforms his destiny and, thanks to an ageing one-armed warrior, he wins his freedom and becomes one with the Vikings. Clan rivalries force Dragonheart and his new Jarl to sail the seas searching for a new home. Landing on the Isle of Man, they must fight for their very survival with enemies old and new seeking their destruction.

Ayrion has been training to fight since he was old enough to walk. As far back as he can remember he’s always had one dream - to be the youngest warrior of his clan. Unfortunately, Ayrion learns the hard way that being the best isn't always a good thing. After a tragic accident rips away his dreams and leaves him without a home, Ayrion heads south to the capital city of Aramoor in hopes of starting a new life. That journey will test him in ways he had never expected, forcing him to use every ounce of his training just to stay alive.

The saga begins in tribal, pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and mighty High Kings at Tara, with the tale of two lovers whose travails cleverly echo the ancient Celtic legend of Cuchulainn. From that stirring beginning, Rutherfurd takes the listener on a powerfully imagined journey through the centuries. Through the interlocking stories of a memorable cast of characters we see Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.

Evoking two of the most famous battles of the Ancient World - the Battle of Marathon and the Last Stand at Thermopylae - The Gates of Athens is a bravura piece of storytelling by a well acclaimed master of the historical adventure novel.

They came on foot and by horseback, in wagons and on rafts, singly and by the score, restless, adventurous, enterprising, relentless, seeking a foothold on the future. European immigrants and American colonists, settlers and speculators, soldiers and missionaries, fugitives from justice and from despair-pioneers all, in the great and inexorable westward expansion defined at its heart by the majestic flow of the Ohio River. This is their story, a chronicle of monumental dimension, of resounding drama and impact set during a pivotal era in our history: the birth and growth of a nation.

When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.

Wolf of the North: It has been generations since the Northlands have seen a hero worthy of the title. Many have made the claim, but few have lived to defend it. Timid, weak, and bullied, Wulfric is as unlikely a candidate as there could be. Jorundyr's Path: Jorundyr's Path is walked only by the brave. As Wulfric pursues Adalhaid's Blood Debt, he soon learns that the path to revenge is never easy. The Blood Debt: A blade fit for a hero. An army for a tyrant. A reckoning long awaited, and a tale reaching its end.

Anno Domini 1040. Christianity has swept unstoppably across Scandinavia, leaving few enclaves of the old ways clinging on to their fading world as King Olof of Sweden works to convert his people. A young warrior, Halfdan, has witnessed the ‘mercy' of the Christian lords, watched his people attacked, his village burned and the Odin stone toppled as heretical. Watched his father cut down by an ambitious Christian jarl and his zealous priest. Among the ashes of his world, he vowed an oath of vengeance before all the gods.

It is 1547, and Scotland has been humiliated by an English invasion and is threatened by machinations elsewhere beyond its borders, but it is still free. Paradoxically, her freedom may depend on a man who stands accused of treason. He is Francis Crawford of Lymond, a scapegrace nobleman of crooked felicities and murderous talents, possessed of a scholar's erudition and a tongue as wicked as a rapier. In The Game of Kings, this extraordinary antihero returns to the country that has outlawed him to redeem his reputations even at the risk of his life.

Everyone knows the story-how Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, how Camelot came to be, and about the power struggles that ultimately destroyed Arthur's dreams. But what of the time before Arthur and the forces that created him?

To save his people and the forbidden magic they're sworn to defend, Wardin Rath surrenders his birthright and his past. For seven years, he's held at the court of his deadliest enemy, oblivious to all he's lost. Until one day, the spell that stole his memories begins to crack. On the heels of a harrowing escape, Wardin's quest for answers leads him to the last magistery, where he studied magic as a boy. But he'll find no safe haven there - or anywhere.

Bahzell is no knight in shining armor, and besides he has too many problems of his own to be messing with anybody else's problems - let alone the War God's. Unfortunately, the War God has other ideas for him.

In the chaos of 14th-century England and France, wine is the nectar of angels - a valuable commodity buttressing kingdoms and vaulting vast fortunes. A mysterious old archer named David Arrowsmith recounts his tale to an eager French chronicler, Jean Créton, when the latter learns that his mission to Scotland seems a failure. The burden of Arrowsmith's story rests with Créton, who suddenly finds himself writing about a seemingly cursed infant that barely escapes the grip of the Black Death in rural Wales when his family dies.

Will, son of Harry, is about to join one of the freebooting mercenaries who serve the Black Prince in Gascony and Spain. Soldiers of fortune, they fight for pay and for loot. Circumstances mean that he comes to the attention of the heir to the English throne, Prince Edward, and is chosen as the bodyguard for his sons, Edward and Richard. When the Black Prince dies before his father and his elder brother, Edward, also dies, a young Richard of Bordeaux becomes heir to the throne, and Will has a greater responsibility than he expected.

A young girl called Tozi stands at the bottom of a pyramid, waiting to be led to the top where her heart will be cut out.... Pepillo, a Spanish orphan who serves a sadistic Dominican friar, is aboard the Spanish fleet as it sails towards Mexico.... This is the epic story of the clash of two empires, two armies and two gods of war. Five hundred desperate adventurers are about to pit themselves against the most brutal armies of the ancient Americas, armies hundreds of thousands strong.

Refusing to marry a pig farmer and joining the army, even if it means never seeing her family again, Paksenarrion begins an adventure that enables her to restore an overthrown ruler.

Based on real historical events. A time for vengeance AD 9, German frontier: Close to the Rhine, a Roman centurion, Lucius Tullus, prepares to take his soldiers on patrol. On the opposite side of the river, German tribes are resentful of the harsh taxes about to be imposed upon them. Suspicious that there might be unrest, Tullus knows that his men's survival will be determined not just by their training and discipline, but by his leadership.

In an ancient Japan where the incursions of gods, ghosts, and demons into the living world is an everyday event, an impoverished nobleman named Yamada no Goji makes his living as a demon hunter for hire. With the occasional assistance of the reprobate exorcist Kenji, whatever the difficulty - ogres, demons, fox-spirits - for a price Yamada will do what needs to be done, even and especially if the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as the edge of a sword.

Tragedy tears Gerald's world apart, and only his unwavering loyalty to the Baron of Bodden saves him. After serving as a soldier for years, a single act of self-sacrifice thrusts his future into the world of politics. Cut off from all he knows, he becomes no more than a pawn to those in command. Banished with little more than the clothes on his back, he seeks a new purpose, for what is a warrior who has nothing left to fight for?

When Edward of York takes back the English crown, the Wars of the Roses scatter the Lancastrian nobility, and young Henry Tudor, with a strong claim to the throne, is forced into exile. Recently widowed and vulnerable, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, forges an uncomfortable alliance with Edward’s Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Swearing an oath of allegiance to York, Margaret agrees to marry the King’s shrewdest courtier, Lord Stanley. But can she tread the precarious line between duty to her husband, loyalty to her son, and her obligation to God and the King?

In When Christ and His Saints Slept, the first of a trilogy that will tell the story of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, master storyteller and historian Sharon Kay Penman illuminates one of the less known but fascinating periods of English history. It begins with the death of King Henry I, son of William the Conqueror and father of Maude, his only living legitimate offspring.

When his father is killed at Arsuf protecting King Richard, Thomas is knighted. His hopes of inheriting his family's manor are dashed when Prince John takes power in his brother's absence. With a handful of men, Sir Thomas is forced to travel to Sweden where he joins the Jarl Birger Brosa fighting the Estonians, Karelians and Slavs. Fighting in the harsh environment of a Baltic winter makes Sir Thomas and his men stronger. There he learns of further treachery and dishonour among Bishops, Kings and Princes who value thrones more than men.

The Roman grip on Britain is weakening. Emperor Nero has turned his face away from this far-flung outpost. The Druids are on the rise, spreading seeds of rebellion among the British tribes. Roman cruelty and exploitation has angered their British subjects. The warrior queen Boudicca will lead the tribes to war. Standing against the rising tide of Boudicca's rebellion is Roman Tribune, Gaius Valerius Verrens, Commander of the veteran legions at Colonia.

For those looking for the real story behind the fictionalized movie account of the 47 Ronin story, this is the definitive, fascinating account of this unforgettable tale of a band of samurai who defied the Emperor to avenge the disgrace and death of their master, and faced certain death as a result. It led to one of the bloodiest episodes in Japanese history, and in the process, created a new set of heroes in Japan.