Ancient Thriller Mysteries

Alexandria, 47BC. Cleopatra – seventh of her name, avatar of the goddess Isis, ruler of the Kingdom of Egypt – watches over her city. The war is over, but Alexandria has suffered in its wake. Caesar has returned to Rome, and the queen must restore her city and her kingdom to their former greatness. But now a body has been found floating upright at the bottom of the sea, anchored by a weight around its feet. It's the second corpse to be found this way, and with a city to rebuild and a kingdom to keep in line, Cleopatra cannot allow any more murders to interfere.

Once there was a time when Romagna was named Flaminia and the Rubicon was not only a river. When Julius Caesar arrived in 49 BCE, he found waiting for him a wooden palisade colored ruby red where he deployed his legions for several months on that border defended by the legionaries of Pompey. But who built, even before Caesar was born, and for what reason was a red line of defense built stretching out to the sea, and what would Caesar and his legions do to breach it?

Un Aníbal ya maduro supera los recelos de sus enemigos en el Senado de Cartago y se prepara para derrotar por fin a Roma. Para ello, se apodera de gran parte de Isphanya (península Ibérica en lengua púnica) y hace suyas las riquezas y el espíritu de sus guerreros. Durante esas campañas militares adiestra a su ejército y lo convierte en una máquina de combate homogénea a pesar de estar formado por decenas de etnias distintas y mercenarios.

Rom, 95 nach Christus: Durch Zufall gerät der reiche Bürger Decimus Junius Juvenalis an die Leiche eines Unbekannten. Bei der Suche nach dem Mörder findet Decimus sich plötzlich im Netz der Intrigen des tyrannischen Kaisers Domitian wieder. Auf seiner Flucht vor den Schergen des Kaisers taucht er in die Unterwelt Roms ein, flieht bis nach Pompeji und endet schließlich in der schroffen Felswüste Qumrans, beim toten Meer. Dort findet er in der Bibliothek der Essener uralte Papyrusrollen, die ein großes Geheimnis bergen.

Caesar and Brutus. Marius and Sulla. Cicero, Antony, Clodius, and Augustus. The end of the Roman Republic gave us a host of larger-than-life characters hailing from Rome. Only one was named Great. In the year 90 B.C.E., chaos and unrest erupts across the Italian peninsula. Rome's allies have rebelled and taken up arms against the most powerful military on Earth. Leading Rome's legions - and his only son - to the city's defense, an unproven and unloved commander will taste victory and defeat outside the capital's gates.

Britannia, anno 305 dopo Cristo. È un autunno ventoso quello che accoglie Elio Sparziano ai piedi del Vallo di Adriano, l'ultimo sistema di difesa dell'impero romano contro le tribù della Scozia. L'incarico di Elio - ottimo soldato ma spirito libero - ha il sapore di un castigo per la sua indipendenza, giacché dovrà solo ispezionare i forti del Vallo; un lavoro più da burocrate che da uomo d'azione. Eppure la sua missione si complica di colpo alla notizia di una strage: un gruppo di barbari ha infatti trucidato un'intera guarnigione.

Si chiama Agnus, ma per i cristiani è la "Voce del fuoco". Vagabonda nelle province dell'Impero romano e compie prodigi sovrannaturali: risana ciechi, resuscita morti. Eppure, quando Marco Lupo, gestore di un mattonificio a Confluentes, muore per la seconda volta pochi giorni dopo la sua "resurrezione", l'inviato imperiale Elio Sparziano comincia a sospettare che dietro quei miracoli possa nascondersi qualcosa di assai più terreno.

I confini orientali dell'Impero sono minacciati da un personaggio misterioso quanto terribile: Ter Vishap, il Signore dei Draghi che domina con il terrore quelle remote regioni e a cui la credulità popolare attribuisce poteri sovrannaturali. Elio Sparziano è inviato a fare chiarezza, ma la sua missione, ancora prima di iniziare, si tinge di sangue: Sanazar, il mercante persiano che avrebbe dovuto fare da intermediario, muore in un incidente forse troppo provvidenziale.

In the dark of night, a covert group of bandits enters the village of Rekeem and kidnaps Rasha, daughter of the great Abdali-ud-din leader, Zafir. They seek a hefty ransom, and know Zafir will sacrifice everything to win back the safety of his beloved daughter. But it's not just Zafir who wants to find her. Bassam, Zafir's young protégé in the caravans, is deeply in love with Rasha. And he will let nothing stop him from finding her - even a perilous journey - even death.

Elio Sparziano, ufficiale e storico, viene inviato da Diocleziano in Egitto per vigilare sul rispetto degli editti imperiali e per raccogliere informazioni utili a scrivere una biografia dell'imperatore Adriano, morto da quasi duecento anni. La sua indagine assume però contorni inediti, ed estremamente attuali, quando viene a sapere che le prove di una cospirazione ai danni di Roma si celerebbero nel leggendario sepolcro di Antinoo, il favorito di Adriano annegato nel Nilo giovanissimo in circostanze mai chiarite (incidente? Omicidio? Rito sacrificale?).

AD 173. The Danube lies frozen. On its banks gather the clans of Sarmatia, their riders winter starved by sickly herds and blighted crops. Petty feuds cast aside and their disparate numbers united in the face of a great enemy. For across the frozen waters stands the mighty Roman Empire, and its Legion marches ever closer.

The Persian War is over, and an unaccustomed decade of peace has come to ancient Athens. Philocles, an aspiring comic playwright, is making his living as a writer for hire, but this year is the highlight of his career - he has a play in a drama competition at a prestigious festival. The last thing he wants to find on his doorstep the day before is a dead body. Just who is this dead man? Is it just a robbery gone wrong? With the play that could make his name on the horizon, Philocles must find out who this man is, why he has been murdered - and why the corpse was in his doorway.

Atunci când călugărul novice Tenzin Dorje află de la gurul său că Armata Roşie invadează Tibetul, cel mai sumbru moment din istoria ţării sale îi prilejuieşte, în mod paradoxal, o conştientizare a scopului său existenţial. Acceptă misiunea de a transporta în siguranţă prin munţii Himalaya două texte antice ţinute în secret.

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark. But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead. His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone.

3 BC. Two wild Germanic brothers, Armin and Wulf, are held hostage in Rome to keep their father from rebelling against the Empire. As the years pass, they are moulded into ideal soldiers: brave, disciplined, ruthless. Attributes that are to be tested when a conspiracy arises, threatening their emperor and the Empire’s future.... As serving Roman soldiers, the brothers are separated at opposite ends of the Empire, each proving their bloody might on the battlefield.

The fourth of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, Lord of the Horizon, the sequel to Eyes of Horus, is set in Egypt at the close of the dark XIth dynasty and is a profound commentary on the power of fear and the unlimited ability of light to shatter it. Lord of the Horizon is the story of Ra-ab Hotep, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx. Ra-ab is 21 as the story begins. The dawn for which Ra-ab and the Watchers of the Horizon fought in Eyes of Horus has come, but to "Send Fear into Exile", as the Watchers' password promised, proves difficult.

Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two students are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the 500-year-old Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it. As the deadline looms, research has stalled, until an ancient diary surfaces.

An ugly civil war has just ended in Israel. One lone woman's death in the territory belonging to the tribe of Benjamin has shocked the nation. Fathers, brothers, and sons joined the army to demand justice. The guilty must pay for such a crime, and so they have. As everyone is left picking up the pieces, Benjamin has lost the most. Cities are burned to the ground, and Benjamin itself is in danger of disappearing. The once mighty tribe has been reduced to a mere 600 men.

La vida de los jóvenes atenienses es dura: viven una existencia de semiesclavitud que se reparte entre trabajar para los adultos y prepararse para los Juegos de la Guerra. Esta competición a muerte fue ideada tiempo atrás por los Consejos de Ancianos de Atenas y Esparta como sustituto de la guerra entre adultos. Quien gana los juegos tiene derecho a imponer sus costumbres a su rival. El problema es que los espartanos llevan diez años seguidos ganando los juegos, y un legado ateniense, enviado a Esparta para investigar la cuestión, desaparece sin dejar rastro.

Novel·la breu i intensa, esbalaïdora i poètica, sobre el misteri de la mirada de l'auriga de Delfos. La mirada de l´auriga, enllà e la trama de la nissaga dinomènida i de l´entrellat d´unes atziagues morts familiars, és una novel·la tan breu com intensa i tan esbalaïdora com poètica.