Medieval English

If you were one of King Henry VIII's six wives, who would you be? Would you be Anne Boleyn, who literally lost her head? Would you be the subject of rumor and scandal like Catherine Howard? Or would you get away and survive like Anna of Cleves? Meet them and Henry's other queens - each bound for divorce or death - in this epic and thrilling novel that reads like fantasy but really happened.

Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron. Growing up in Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions - art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge - Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, Brienna's greatest fear comes true - she is left without a patron. But months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage.

Harald Sigurdsson burst into history as a teenaged youth in a Viking battle from which he escaped with little more than his life and a thirst for vengeance. But from these humble origins, he became one of Norway’s most legendary kings. The Last Viking is a fast-moving narrative account of the life of King Harald Hardrada, as he journeyed across the medieval world, from the frozen wastelands of the North to the glittering towers of Byzantium and the passions of the Holy Land, until his warrior death on the battlefield in England.

Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey has been the standard translation for more than three generations of students and poets. Macmillan Audio is delighted to publish the first ever audio edition of this classic work, the greatest of all epic poems. Fitzgerald's supple verse is ideally suited for audio, recounting the story of Odysseus' long journey back to his wife and home after the Trojan War. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language listener in all its glory.

Events are coming to a climax in the Banished Lands, as the war reaches new heights. King Nathair has taken control of the fortress at Drassil and three of the Seven Treasures are in his possession. And together with Calidus and his ally Queen Rhin, Nathair will do anything to obtain the remaining Treasures. With all seven under his command, he can open a portal to the Otherworld. Then Asroth and his demon-horde will finally break into the Banished Lands and become flesh.

Weak in battle, powerless at court, and absent in the bedroom: the English crown has rarely sat less easily than on the head of Edward II. Inheriting the Plantagenet throne in a powerful position, Edward needs a wife to continue the dynasty - but the beautiful, charming Isabella fails to stir his heart like his close friend Piers Gaveston. Slighted and ignored, Isabella takes a new lover: the ambitious nobleman Roger Mortimer. Seduced by Mortimer's treachery, Isabella plots with him to murder her husband and take the throne.

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.

Mordred is the son of King Arthur, bastard child of his union with his half sister Morgause. Prophesied by Merlin to kill Arthur, Mordred is stolen away from his mother and raised in secrecy by a kind couple on an isolated Orkney island in the hopes that he will defy his fate. Mordred, known to history as a traitor and a murderer, is no villain but a quick-witted young man, with hopes and dreams of his own. But try as he might, Mordred cannot escape Merlin's prophecy.

Fenella Thane is a desperate woman. Her absentee husband of eight years has served her with divorce papers, and she looks likely to lose her beloved home and be forced into a convent. There is just one slim chance to avoid this fate, one person of prominence at court who she knows has the ear of the King. Oswald Vawdrey, the man who cruelly jilted her when she was a starry-eyed 15-year-old with a head full of romantic dreams.

Scottish Highlands, 1727. In the aftermath of a tragic fire that kills her father, Aila and her mother, Janet, move to the remote parish of Loth, north-west of Inverness. Blending in does not come easily to the women: Aila was badly burned in the fire and left with visible injuries, while her mother struggles to maintain her grip on reality. When a temporary minister is appointed in the area, rather than welcome the two women, he develops a strange curiosity for them that sets them even further apart from the community.

1368. War is coming between France and Spain, and England, and in Italy the pope and the Visconti princes are battling for bloody supremacy. The worst years of Sir William Gold's life are about to begin. Leaving the side of his commander, Sir John Hawkwood, William embarks on a journey to serve the Count of Savoy, finding fame and favour in his service. But when his wife and children are struck down by the plague, William uses the poisoning of the Duke of Clarence as an excuse to escape on a witch hunt across Southern France and embark on a pilgrimage that he'd always pledged to do.

Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon?

In the rugged Highlands, a proud warrior is about to fall. Highlander Brus MacLeod doesn't want the betrothal forced upon him, and he certainly does not intend to take the woman as his wife, no matter who commands it. He has every intention of driving the unexpectedly feisty lass to break the marriage contract and has no plans to let her into his head, bed, or heart. But then the funny, warm slip of a woman invades his home, his life, his soul, and he finds himself unable to forget her, even when she seems to have utterly forgotten him.

When the Hussite leaders entrust Reynevan with a dangerous secret mission, he is forced to come out of hiding in Bohmeia and depart for Silesia. At the same time, he strives to avenge the death of his brother and discover the whereabouts of his beloved. Once again pursued by multiple enemies, he must contend with danger on every front.

Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades - sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church.

In The Normans, Lars Brownworth follows their story, from the first shock of a Viking raid on an Irish monastery to the exile of the last Norman Prince of Antioch. In the process, he brings to vivid life the Norman tapestry's rich cast of characters: figures like Rollo the Walker, William Iron-Arm, Tancred the Monkey King, and Robert Guiscard. The Normans presents a fascinating glimpse of a time when a group of restless adventurers had the world at their fingertips.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.

On the night Ronia was born, a thunderstorm raged over the mountain, but in Matt's castle and among his band of robbers there was only joy - for Matt now had a spirited little black-haired daughter. Soon Ronia learns to dance and yell with the robbers, but it is alone in the forest that she feels truly at home. Then one day Ronia meets Birk, the son of Matt's arch-enemy. Soon after Ronia and Birk become friends the worst quarrel ever between the rival bands erupts, and Ronia and Berk are right in the middle.

At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness.

Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times best-selling "reigning king of historical fiction" (USA Today), tackles his most thrilling, rich, and enthralling subject yet - the heroic tale of Agincourt. The epic battle immortalized by William Shakespeare in his classic Henry V is the background for this breathtaking tale of heroism, love, devotion, and duty from the legendary author of the Richard Sharpe novels and the Saxon Tales.