Leonidas, champion gladiator of Rome, is set free from the games by a mysterious benefactor who grants him freedom, a place to live, and a servant - Cassia, a scribe - to look after him. But the benefactor is only so generous - Leonidas must pay his own way and Cassia’s, which means hiring himself out. The sharp-witted Cassia quickly lands him a post as a bodyguard, escorting a retired senator to Ostia.

In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.

After more than 500 years of exile, the heir to the empyre is wary about his sudden reassignment to active duty on the Goblin War’s front lines. His mission to rescue an outpost leads to a dead-end canyon deep inside enemy territory, and his suspicion turns to dread when he discovers the stronghold doesn't exist.

Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade. The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on "crusades of conquest". Now, the third Moontide is almost here, and this time the people of the East are ready for a fight... but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world.

In the land of Pharaoh, Tuya has always been a slave. As a little girl, she was sold as a playmate to a wealthy child who became her best friend. But as she approaches womanhood, beautiful Tuya is betrayed and cast out. Now she belongs to Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard. Yet her heart is owned by handsome Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brothers. Proud, arrogant Joseph dreams of freedom, of his own household, of Tuya as his queen.

The year is 1759, and London is shrouded in a cloak of fear. With the constables at the mercy of highwaymen, it’s a perilous time to work the already dangerous streets of Soho. Lizzie Hardwicke makes her living as a prostitute, somewhat protected from the fray as one of Mrs Farley’s girls. But then one of her wealthy customers is found brutally murdered...and Lizzie was the last person to see him alive.

Ingerval is the Country of the Dead. Funerals are happy occasions in Ingerval, and the King is planning for his to be the most decadent in the country's long memory. He does not know that, unlike every lord before him, he will not return to rule alongside his ancestors. He will die the true death, sparking a succession crisis that throws the noble families into chaos.

This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars, their destinies remain the same....

In the first century B.C. at the height of the Roman Republic, two men set their sights on becoming the First Man - the Roman more respected than any other. Marius, a heroic man of strength and means, lacks the noble blood to contend for the First Man, but overcomes his common status when he marries into the patrician house of Caesar. Sulla, a pleasure-seeking aristocrat without money of his own, is transformed by his ambitions into a fierce and daring warrior. Together the two men will shape history as they are thrust into a raging storm....

Franco Fiorvanti is a handsome lemon grower toiling on the estate of a baron. He dreams of owning his own grove, but the rigid class system of Sicily thwarts his ambition. Determined to secure a better future, Franco will do anything to prove his loyalty to the baron. But when the baron asks him to kidnap a little boy named Dante, Franco makes a decision that will change his life—and even the history of Sicily—forever.

As unwanted and rebellious boys, they find refuge in Ironhall.... Years later, they emerge as the finest swordsmen in the realm - a magical ritual of a sword through the heart binds each to his ward - if not the king himself, then to whomever else the monarch designates - with absolute loyalty. And the greatest Blade of them all was - and is - Sir Durendal. But a lifelong dream of protecting his beloved liege from enemies, traitors, and monsters is dashed to bits when Durendal is bonded till death to an effete noble fop at his king's orders.

A young woman survives the unthinkable in this stunning and emotionally satisfying tale of family, love, and resilience, set against the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of an English peer, is forced to flee from Oxford for his part in the university riots of 1273. Inspired by Friar Bacon, he determines to travel to China. With his friend Tristam, he fights his way to the heart of the fabulous Mongol Empire and returns famous, to find that he must choose between the first love he thought lost and the exotic flower that he found in the East.

In 1892, Bombay is the center of British India. Nearby, Captain Jim Agnihotri lays in Poona military hospital recovering from a skirmish on the wild Northern frontier, with little to read but newspapers. The case that catches Jim's attention is being called the crime of the century: Two women fell from the busy university’s clock tower in broad daylight. Moved by the widower of one of the victims - his certainty that his wife and sister did not commit suicide - Jim approaches the Framjis and is hired by the Parsee family to investigate what happened that terrible afternoon.

When Joseph of Arimathea took Yeshua's corpse off the cross and placed it in his own tomb, he risked everything he'd worked years for. But now, Yeshua's body is gone, and Joseph is running for his life. Sister has never known anything but the lower city slums. She's a creature of the night, so base and inconsequential she's never even warranted a name.

A young woman survives the unthinkable in this stunning and emotionally satisfying tale of family, love, and resilience, set against the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of an English peer, is forced to flee from Oxford for his part in the university riots of 1273. Inspired by Friar Bacon, he determines to travel to China. With his friend Tristam, he fights his way to the heart of the fabulous Mongol Empire and returns famous, to find that he must choose between the first love he thought lost and the exotic flower that he found in the East.

Margaret of Ashbury wants to write her life story. However, like most women in 14th-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret’s scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness.

In the land of Pharaoh, Tuya has always been a slave. As a little girl, she was sold as a playmate to a wealthy child who became her best friend. But as she approaches womanhood, beautiful Tuya is betrayed and cast out. Now she belongs to Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard. Yet her heart is owned by handsome Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brothers. Proud, arrogant Joseph dreams of freedom, of his own household, of Tuya as his queen.

Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade. The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on "crusades of conquest". Now, the third Moontide is almost here, and this time the people of the East are ready for a fight... but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world.

In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.

In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom - the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know. The woman whose image was later immortalized in glittering mosaic was a scrappy, clever, conniving, flesh-and-blood woman full of sensuality and spirit whose real story is as surprising as any ever told....

London, June 1860: When an assassination attempt is made on Queen Victoria, and a petty thief is gruesomely murdered moments later - and only a block away - Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field quickly surmises that these crimes are connected to an even more sinister plot. Was Victoria really the assassin's target? Are those closest to the Crown hiding something? Soon, Field's investigation exposes a shocking conspiracy in which the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species sets off a string of murders, arson, kidnapping, and the pursuit of a diabolical madman.

It's 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III's England. Then a beautiful young woman is found savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A dueling pistol found at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man - Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experience in the Napoleonic Wars.

In this Edgar Award-nominated mystery, John Maddox Roberts takes listeners back to a Rome filled with violence and evil. Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike. So the garroting of a lowly ex-slave and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy.

Brianna loves her new job as maid to Lady Marguerite. Like many high nobles, Marguerite is attended by echoes, silent creatures who look exactly like her and move in perfect synchronicity. News soon comes that Marguerite has been invited to the royal city as a potential bride for the crown prince. Brianna is delighted to accompany Marguerite to the city - and perhaps get a chance to continue her own flirtation with Nico, one of the king’s inquisitors. Then, disaster strikes on the road when they come under attack.

Truth. Justice. Revenge. Behind these stands The Scotsman's Sword. When Lor Careston's quiet Highland village was attacked and burned, he felt helpless against the raiders who destroyed his home. Seeking revenge, but lacking the fighting skills he needs to execute his mission, he sets out to find the Ludus Caledonia - a mysterious fight guild that turns men into warriors. Lor trains hard, proves himself in the ring, and earns a place with the very clan that decimated his home, having decided to set his plan for revenge in motion from inside the clan.

With a ragged peace in place, demons burn farmlands, violent Reivers roam the wilds and plague has spread beyond the Black Meadows. The country is on its knees. In a society that fears and shuns him, Aranok is the first magically-skilled draoidh to be named King's Envoy. Now, charged with restoring an exiled foreign queen to her throne, he leads a group of strangers across the ravaged country. But at every step, a new mystery complicates their mission.

In a snowbound inn high in the Alps, four people meet who will alter fate. A noble Byzantine mercenary.... A female Florentine physician.... An ageless Welsh wizard.... And Sforza, the uncanny duke. Together they will wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester - and make him Richard III.

It is a time of celebration in the Pingkang li, where imperial scholars and bureaucrats mingle with beautiful courtesans. At the center is the Lotus Palace, home of the most exquisite courtesans in China. aidservant Yue-ying is not one of those beauties. Street-smart and practical, she's content to live in the shadow of her infamous mistress - until she meets the aristocratic playboy Bai Huang.