Showing results by author "Lindsey Davis" in All Categories

Some things never change. With his new villa, Falco also gets a timeless headache: building contractors. After the departure of two shady plasterers, a rank odor in the bathhouse soon leads to the discovery of a corpse under the mosaic floor. Should Falco follow the culprits to remote Britannica? Despite the British weather (damp), the inhabitants (barbarians), and the wine (second-rate), Falco takes his whole family and goes. In veritas, Falco has another, secret reason for this exodus.

Balbinus Pius, the most notorious gangster in Emperor Vespasian's Rome, has been convicted of a capital crime at last. A quirk of Roman law, however, allows citizens condemned to death "time to depart" and find exile outside the empire. Now, as every hoodlum in Rome scrambles to take over Balbinus' operations, private eye Marcus Didius Falco has to deal with an unprecedented wave of crime - and the sneaking suspicion that Balbinus' exile may not really be so permanent after all.

After six months in wild Germania, imperial gumshoe Marcus Didius Falco is back in Rome sweet Rome - but his apartment has been ransacked. And although he desperately needs 400,000 sesterces in order to marry his aristocratic love, Helena, his only client is his mother, who insists that he find out whether the scandalous claims against his dead brother, Festus, are true. Then the chief tarnisher of Festus' good name is murdered, and Marcus becomes the prime suspect.

Fresh from a trip to far-flung Londinium in Britain, Falco needs to reestablish his presence in Rome. A minor role in the trial of a senator entangles him in the machinations of two powerful lawyers. The senator is convicted but then dies, apparently by suicide. It may have been a legal move to protect his heirs; Falco is hired to prove it was murder. As he shows off his talents in the role of advocate, Falco exposes himself to a tangle of upper-class secrets and powerful elements in Rome's legal hierarchy that may have unintended - if not fatal - consequences.

It's AD 76, during the reign of Vespasian, and Marcus Didius Falco has achieved much in his life. He's joined the equestrian rank, allowing him to marry Helena Justina, the woman he's been keeping time with the past few years. But that doesn't mean all is quiet for Falco, Helena, and their two young daughters. By trade he is an informer, a man who looks into sticky situations, and he's been hired to pry his errant brother-in-law away from a murder investigation.

Four novella-length stories written to illuminate Lindsey Davis's unparalleled output of the last 30 years, with an introduction written and narrated by the author.

Rome, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco is desperate to leave the notorious Lautumiae prison—though being bailed out by his mother is a slight indignity. Things go from bad to worse when a group of nouveau riche ex-slaves hire him to outwit a fortune-hunting redhead whose husbands have a habit of dying accidentally, leaving him up against a female contortionist, her extra-friendly snake, indigestible cakes, and rent racketeers. All the while Falco tries to lure Helena Justina to live with him.

Lindsey Davis’ Master and God is a vastly entertaining historical novel set in the reign of the Emperor Domitian in first-century Rome. It is on the one hand a love story between Gaius Vinius Clodianus, a valiant but reluctant member of the Praetorian Guard, whose military career is as successful as his marital history is disastrous, and Flavia Lucilla, daughter of a freed slave and hairdresser to the ladies of the imperial household. A devastating fire in Rome brings them together....

Rome, August AD 89. Flavia Albia, the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken up her father's former profession as an informer. On a typical day, it's small cases - cheating spouses, employees dipping into the till - but this isn't a typical day. Her beloved, the plebeian Manlius Faustus, has recently moved in and decided that they should get married in a big, showy ceremony as part of beginning a proper domestic life together.

When Germanic troops in the service of the empire begin to rebel and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer whose rates are low enough that even the stingy Vespasian is willing to pay them. To Falco, an undercover tour of Germany is an assignment from Hades. On a journey that only a stoic could survive, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder. His one hope: In the northern forest lives a powerful Druid priestess who perhaps can be persuaded to cease her anti-Rome activities and work for peace.

He has no money, no reputation and no famous ancestors.' The love story of the Emperor Vespasian, who brought peace to Rome after years of strife, and his mistress, the freed slave woman Caenis, this book recreates Ancient Rome's most turbulent period - the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero and Vespasian's rise to power. As their forbidden romance blossoms, Caenis is embroiled in political intrigue, while Vespasian embarks on a glorious career.

Nothing's certain except death and taxes. Catching tax evaders for Emperor Vespasian looks like a plum position for Marcus Didius Falco, who has teamed up with his old boss, Anacrites, the crotchety chief spy of Rome. Soon, however, Falco is bogged down in bureaucracy, stuck at his stylus, and longing for a good murder to investigate. He gets one when someone kills Leonidas, the empire's official executioner.

In the sacred grove of Julius Caesar, something deadly stirs in the undergrowth - a serial killer, who haunted the gardens for years, has claimed another victim - in Lindsey Davis' next historical mystery, The Grove of the Caesars. At the feet of her adoptive father, renowned private informer Marcus Didius Falco, Flavia Albia learned a number of important rules. First and foremost - always keep one's distance from the palace, nothing good comes from that direction. But right behind it - murder is the business of the Vigiles, best to leave them to it.

Flavia Albia, daughter and successor of private informer Marcus Didius Falco is twiddling her thumbs with no clients during the December festival of Saturnalia. But that doesn't mean all is quiet. Her husband Tiberius and the Fourth Cohort are battling organized crime interests that are going to war over the festival nuts. A series of accidental poisonings, then bloody murders of rival nut-sellers, and finally a gruesome warning to Tiberius from the hidden criminal powers to back off.

In ancient Rome, the number of slaves was far greater than that of free citizens. As a result, often the people Romans feared most were the "enemies at home," the slaves under their own roofs. Because of this, Roman law decreed that if the head of a household was murdered at home, and the culprit wasn't quickly discovered, his slaves - all of them, guilty or not - were presumed responsible and were put to death...without exception.

First century Rome is plagued by all the evils the have beset major cities since time immemorial: crime, corruption, squalor, and worst of all, tourists. When a barge full of those entitled creatures arrives in Rome, they hit all the touristy hot-spots (the Amphitheatre, the Capitol, the dodgy bars with dubious entertainments) before departing for the next destination-leaving behind one of their party, dead and floating in the Tiber.

In AD 90, following the Saturninus revolt in Germany, the emperor Domitian has become more paranoid about traitors and dissenters around him. This leads to several senators and even provincial governors facing charges and being executed for supposed crimes of conspiracy and insulting the emperor. Wanting to root out all the supports of Saturninus from the Senate, one of Domitian's men offers to hire Flavia Alba to do some intelligence work.

With hideous murders in the streets of Rome, a lone female traveller arrives with an agenda of her own. But when her corpse is dragged out of the river bearing signs of foul play, Flavia Albia is drawn in, concerned about her fellow Briton's fate. Albia's quest to find the killer becomes deeply personal when she discovers a man at the centre of the plot is an old adversary of hers. Will she be obsessed by revenge? Can she let the past go, or will it consume her?

Do you struggle with your relationship with food? Are you tired of chasing diets and feeling like a failure? Emotional eating (stress eating, binge eating) can feel like a never-ending cycle of guilt and shame. You turn to food for comfort or stress relief, but the relief is only temporary, and the weight gain and health consequences can be long-lasting.

In the first century AD, during Domitian's reign, Flavia Albia is ready for a short break from her family. So in July she returns to Rome, leaving them at their place on the coast. Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, who is now retired as private informer, has taken up her father's former profession, and it's time to get back to work. The first order of business, however, is the corpse found in a chest sent as part of a large lot to be sold by the Falco family auction house.