Byzantine Fiction

Louis L’Amour has been best known for his ability to capture the spirit and drama of the authentic American West. Now he guides his readers to an even more distant frontier—the enthralling lands of the twelfth century. Warrior, lover, and scholar, Kerbouchard is a daring seeker of...

610 AD. The Byzantine Empire is collapsing. Persian armies pour across the eastern frontier. The Balkans are ravaged by barbarian invasions. At the centre of the chaos sits Phocas, a half-mad soldier who has seized the throne and now rules Constantinople through spectacle and arbitrary torture. One province after another declares for Heraclius, the ambitious usurper advancing from Africa. The capital trembles on the brink of destruction. Into this inferno comes Aelric of England—scholar, rake, and reluctant agent of the Papacy. Blackmailed into abandoning a profitable life of lechery and ...

612 AD. Athens is no longer the bright centre of civilisation, but a provincial backwater in a fraying Empire. So why has the Emperor diverted Aelric’s ship from Egypt and ordered him here? And why is Priscus — brutal, treacherous Priscus — included in the warrant? Aelric ought to be saving the Empire’s finances; Priscus ought to be leading its armies against the Persians. Has Heraclius decided to blame them for the bloodbath in Alexandria? Or is the truth far more dangerous? Officially, Aelric’s task is to “manage” a council of Eastern and Western bishops, men more inclined ...

"An extraordinary series" - The Morning Star Step into the world of 615 AD, where heroism and the fate of the Byzantine Empire converge in the conclusion to this prose epic of six massive novels. In the heart of the vast and morally bankrupt city of Constantinople, Aelric of England, now known as the Lord Senator Alaric, stands on the brink of absolute authority. As an insane Persian tyrant prepares to deliver a killing blow to the Byzantine Empire, Alaric appears nearly as powerful as the Emperor himself. Seemingly without opposition, he wields his influence from the confines of his ...

What if the Roman Empire never fell? May 29, 1453. The Ottoman war machine stands at the gates of Constantinople. The Great Cannon, a bronze monster designed by the Hungarian master Orbán, is ready to shatter the ancient Theodosian Walls. History is written in stone and blood, and the end of Christendom is a single shot away. But the cannon fails. In this gripping alternate history, a torn tarpaulin and the dampness of the Bosphorus change the fate of the world. Instead of the city falling, Sultan Mehmed II is captured in the mud of the trenches. Constantine XI, the last Emperor, survives ...

Rome, 609 AD. Empire is a fading memory. Repeatedly fought over and plundered, the City is falling into ruins. Filth and rubble block the streets. Killers prowl by night. Far off, in Constantinople, the Emperor has other concerns. The Church is the one institution left intact, and is now flexing its own imperial muscle. Enter Aelric of England: young and beautiful, sexually uninhibited, heroic, if ruthlessly violent He’s only here by accident. Without getting that girl pregnant, and the resulting near-miss from King Ethelbert’s gelding knife, he might never have left Kent. But here ...

Brought to you by Penguin BOOK TWO OF THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGY Enter the world of Gormenghast...the vast crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is Lord and heir. Gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the...

Benevento, AD 619: A Spy’s Game in a Losing Empire Who butchered Tubby Quintus in Rodi’s bed? Not Rodi himself – the Byzantine Empire’s youngest spy in the West was in another bed when it happened. Was it Aripert, the vicious and expendable brother of the Lombard King? Was it Gisulf, the Duke’s pretty but manipulative and no less expendable nephew? Was it the Duchess – half-drunken, half-shifty regent of Benevento in her husband’s unexplained absence? Or Clementian, her cadaverous steward and trusted “adviser”? So long as he can avoid being hanged at the demand of everyone...

Age Level: 12 and up Constantinople AD 1453... Fifteen-year-old Anna Moore has stepped back in time through the forces of a mysterious mirror to the fifteenth century during the fall of Constantinople. It is a city under siege, surrounded by an army intent on breaching its walls, taking its treasures, and killing or enslaving its people. Caught in the turmoil of the action, Anna tries to help people flee to safety from the impending doom. Inspired by true events that marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, The Gilded Mirror: Constantinople, is a bold and haunting tale of the last days of ...

The monastery at Siani was famous throughout the academic world for its library. The monks of medieval days routinely obtained ancient, crumbling manuscripts and recopied them. Among them, hidden in a wall in the cellar, the following parchment was found and faithfully recopied in the practiced hand of the Sianian monks several centuries after its original writing: “According to the official Catalogue of Popes, after the Holy Father Leo IV died in the Year of Our Lord, Eight hundred fifty five, he was succeeded by Pope Benedict III. I, Martin Paschal, swear upon my eternal soul that the ...

It’s never been easy being a high schooler, and for four students stuck in detention, it’s about to get a whole lot harder. After opening a magical board game they find in a dark closet during detention, each is teleported to another world—the world of Byzantium. What’s worse: this place is in trouble. A slave rebellion has overrun entire cities, and barbarians from the east and west are on the march. On top of that, fantastic monsters and mystical warriors have joined the fray, throwing Byzantium into chaos.

From the author of the “engrossing historical epic” (Booklist) The Scribe of Siena comes a thrilling tale set in the crumbling city of Mystras, Greece, in which a scientist’s vacation with her young son quickly turns into a fight for their lives after they cross paths with a man out of...

Bloomsbury presents Summer Heat by Defne Suman, read by Angela Christofilou. ‘Every woman must be nourished by an inner reservoir of secrets...’ Melike has it all: a beautiful home in Istanbul, a career as an art historian, an attentive husband. But her yearning for more excitement has led...

687 AD. Expansive and triumphant, the Caliphate has stripped Egypt and Syria from the Byzantine Empire. Farther and farther back, the formerly hegemonic Empire has been pushed. All that has saved it from destruction is the invention of Greek Fire. Is it a liquid? Is it a gas? Is it a gift from God or the Devil? Whatever its origin, all know it has broken the Islamic advance and restored Byzantine control of the seas. But what is all this to old Aelric, now in his nineties, and a refugee in the remote wastes of northern England? Nothing—until one band of northern barbarians turns up ...

A must for lovers of historical fiction, particularly of the Crusading era, and the Byzantine Empire. Stephen Bondar has given us a fictionalized first-person account in the form of a private letter from a member of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus's Varangian Guard, describing the Battle of Myriocephalon (September 17 -18, 1176) in graphic and brutal detail. Although fiction, the author has taken great care to stick close to the real historical sources for this watershed event, which unfortunately, like so much else of Byzantine (Later Roman) history is not well-known to students of...

In 1453 the collapse of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity's most sacred City, Constantinople, radiated shocks through the entirety of the Christian world. Symbolically, the Islamic Ottoman Turks had made Santa Sophia, the most famous Christian church in the world, into a mosque. Any doubts that there was a now an Ottoman Empire poised to conquer the Christian West were dispelled. But the history around the collapse itself was surrounded with loose ends and oddities.

The bubonic plague was the worst affliction ever visited upon Europe and the Mediterranean world. Within a few short years, a quarter of the population was taken after a short but torturous illness. Those who escaped faced famine and economic hardship. Crops were left unsown; the harvests spoiled for lack of harvesters; villages, towns, and great cities were depopulated. Markets were destroyed; and trade ground to a halt. It must have seemed like the end of the world to the terrified populace.

Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. When the Duke of Serbia does her the honour of joining her house party, despite her left-wing leanings, Sophie is determined to make a good impression. So she hires an emergency chef who is an expert in making Byzantine omelettes. Within a very short time the entire household is thrown into disarray....

The Proud Stand by the last emperor of the Byzantine Empire tells the tale of the last confrontation between the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empires.