Medieval Crime

November 1146. Gwynedd is at war with Ranulf, Earl of Chester, who seeks to gain a foothold in Wales against the day peace finally comes to England. On the eve of King Owain's counter-assault on Mold Castle, the body of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Gwen is discovered buried in someone else's grave. Even in the midst of war, murder must be investigated, and it falls to Gareth and Gwen to bring the guilty to justice.

Cults, Secrets, Deception, Murder — In The Case of Luna, Darkness Hides More Than You Can Imagine. Beneath the moonlit gaze of the goddess Luna, a lifeless wife is carried by desperate hands. Gripped by memory loss, a husband seeks help from Secundus and Graccus, to peel back the layers of the enigmatic Cult of Luna in this chilling sixth installment of the series. With time slipping through their fingers and his priestly examinations looming, Secundus wrestles with a mounting burden of duties and the continued presence of his overbearing father and ex-centurion Scavolo in their ...

May 1147. Gareth and Gwen have traveled to Deheubarth in the retinue of Prince Hywel. The Prince of Gwynedd has temporarily allied himself with King Cadell and his Norman relations in order to finally evict the hated Flemings from south Wales. But while the battle goes well, the celebratory feast afterwards does not, leaving Gareth and Gwen among the few left standing. And it is to them, as always, that the investigation falls and on whom peace in Wales may well depend.

November 1147. Gareth and Gwen have again been called to a castle belonging to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, this time by Prince Henry, who insists his uncle was murdered. Allying with Normans doesn’t come easily to Gareth and Gwen, but initial doubts are swept aside as more losses come to light. Because Robert's death has upended the balance of power in England, friends and foes alike have a vested interest in keeping the truth from coming out, and it is up to Gareth and Gwen to stop the killer before he claims another victim—and maybe a country.

THE TRIAL OF GILLES DE RAIS France, 1440 The clerk wrote many confessions before, but never one that made his hand hesitate. Ink was meant to record certainty. Dates. Names. Charges. It was designed to trap truth on paper so that it could not escape into rumor. Yet as he sat beneath the vaulted ceiling of the ecclesiastical court, quill hovering above parchment, he felt the familiar betrayal of his craft: that words could also be used to hide what they named. Gilles de Rais stood a few paces away, unchained. He wasn't required to be restrained. That alone unsettled the room. A man accused ...

“Action, drama, desire, revenge: Shadow Music includes all the necessary ingredients for romantics to plunge into the moors, mountains and magical myth of medieval Scotland.”—The Roanoke Times Prized for her exquisite beauty, Princess Gabrielle of St. Biel, the daughter of one of...

March 1147. Determined to escape the gloom that has descended on Aber, Gareth and Gwen travel to Shrewsbury in an attempt to find answers about Rhun's death, about the whereabouts and plans of Prince Cadwaladr, and about Gwen's family ties to England. But when John Fletcher, now Deputy Sheriff of Shrewsbury, asks Gareth to help him investigate a pool of blood for which he has no body, Gareth can't refuse.

He bought me, chained me, but nothing prepared me for the beast who now claims me. Zivra They sold me as a prize to the highest bidder—Korvax, a minotaur warlord with a savage reputation. He’s monstrous, relentless, and intent on breaking me. Yet each brutal touch ignites desires I never knew existed. My mind screams for freedom, but my traitorous heart yearns to surrender completely to the beast whose darkness matches my own. Korvax She’s mine by right of purchase, a beautiful, defiant treasure I intend to tame. Zivra fights me at every turn, her fiery resistance fueling my obsession...

In 1360 Edward III issues a call to arms, as sporadic attacks by the French threaten to turn into a full-blown invasion. In Cambridge, fear of the enemy is magnified by the belief that foreign agents are lurking in the area. Tension runs ever higher as rumours and ignorance fan the flames of suspicion amid preparations for war. And then the first murder occurs - of a French scholar living in the town.

‘Small, very talkative, ready enough to do evil, shrewd and jocular, extremely cruel and daring.’ Orderic Vitalis on Mabel de Belleme. Mabel is the daughter of William de Belleme, known as Talvas, the Hard Shield, for his fierceness in battle…and at home. When William murders Mabel’s mother, he is expelled from his castle into exile—but Mabel follows him loyally, despite what he has done. As the Belleme fortunes gradually return, Mabel is married to an upstanding young lord, Roger de Montgomery, a close friend of the new Duke of Normandy—William, who will one day become the ...

August 1146. Prince Hywel has called all the bards of Wales to him for a music festival to mark the third anniversary of his rule over Ceredigion. He has invited all the lords of Wales too, including his father, his uncle, and his neighbor to the south, King Cadell. But with the highborn also come the low: thieves, spies, and other hangers-on. And when a murderer strikes as the festival starts, Gareth and Gwen are charged with discovering his identity—before the death of a peasant shakes the throne of a king.

March 1147. Assassination, espionage, betrayal. King Owain has ridden east to confront King Madog of Powys with the attempt on the life of his son. Rhys, now abbot of St. Kentigern’s monastery, hopes for peace and calls both Madog and Owain to the negotiating table. Peace, however, is the last thing on Madog’s mind. Recalcitrant, self-righteous, and angry, he sees King Owain’s recent weakness as his opportunity and knows that Owain’s own barons are circling like wolves, waiting for the chance to overthrow him.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel meets The Italian Job in internationally-bestselling author Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg’s witty and insightful comedy of errors about a group of delinquent seniors whose desire for a better quality of life leads them to rob and ransom priceless artwork. Martha...

Every city keeps its records. Kronstadt (today Brasov) keeps something else. When Gertrud, the respected wife of the town physician, begins noticing tiny inconsistencies in burial registers and medical records, she takes note. Until the same patterns appear again. And again. A woman's cause of death quietly changes. Herbs disappear from apothecary inventories. Identical symbols appear beside the names of women who should have had nothing in common. But in medieval Kronstdt power depends upon silence. Set in fifteenth-century Transylvania, The Wife of Kronstadt is an atmospheric historical ...

From “one of America’s smartest and most charming writers” (NPR), an archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind—and through all five senses—from tropical Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes, and everywhere in between. Whether it’s the mighty pyramids of...

When a beggar at her door turns out to be a high born lady, Margaret learns of a family destroyed by the Norman invasion. She resolves to help the woman find her missing daughter—abducted and enslaved by a local mormaer. When the mormaer’s daughter is found murdered, the foreigners quickly become scapegoats. Can Margaret save her displaced countrywomen’s lives, while navigating her new role as queen in a foreign court?

In the midst of the devastating Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight, fresh from combat in Scotland finds his wife, Marguerite, accusing squire Jacques Le Gris of brutally raping her. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris.

A young man from a privileged family, Jan Mydlar, is about to graduate from medical school when a sudden shift of fate changes his life forever. He becomes stuck in the most detested profession for the rest of his life—an executioner. Master Jan Mydlar finds himself in the middle of historical events of Bohemia. The religious and political turmoil in the Habsburg empire reaches its climax in the beginning of the 17th century. When Protestant leaders throw imperial Catholic governors out of the window of their offices at the Prague Castle, a civil war between Protestants and Catholics in ...

Darya has discovered the perfect gift for her daughter's twenty-fifth birthday: an ideal husband. Mina, however, is fed up with her mother's endless matchmaking and grading of available Iranian American bachelors. After Darya's last ill-fated attempt to find Mina a husband, mother and daughter...

The thirty-seventh mystery in Peter Tremayne's long-standing and much-loved series, featuring 7th-century Irish super-sleuth Sister Fidelma. AD 673. Sister Fidelma and her husband Eadulf are journeying back from the Kingdom of the East Angles to Cashel when a violent storm wrecks their ship on...