Even before his birth in 1194, legends surrounded the only child of the emperor Henry VI and the Empress-Queen Constance of the royal Norman house of Sicily. Joachim de Flora pronounced him Antichrist; other prophets saw in him the long-expected child who would usher in the Golden Age. Such high expectations are rarely halfway met. In the case of Frederick II the prophecies were only the start. His bitter fight with the Pope, his decision to go on Crusade, and his taking of Jerusalem with the connivance of the sultan al-Kamil are the bare bones of a story which sweeps through the Mediterranean world from Sicily to Cyprus to Jaffa and climaxes with the crowning of Frederick in Saint Sepulcher in Jerusalem. As always with this superb writer, the modern parallels are subtly drawn.

In THE FIREDRAKE, an Irish mercenary knight in the eleventh century, in a constant personal battle with the rest of the world, joins William of Normandy for the invasion of England. There at Hastings he has to choose between power and wealth, and his personal demons of pride and honor. The NY Times called Cecelia Holland "a literary phenomenon" in their review of this book, recognizing a stellar creative achievement by a young writer in her first published work. Cecelia Holland has published non-fiction historical/biographic works, children's novels, a contemporary novel and a science fiction novel as well as a number of historical essays but she is best known for more than two dozen historical novels set in time periods ranging from from the middle of the first millennium CE up through parts of the early 20th century and from Egypt, through Russia...

Publisher's WeeklySet in 11th-century Italy, Holland's epic presents ongoing battles between Normans and Saracens from a fighting heroine's point of view.

A self-serving political player in sixteenth-century Rome is caught up in the ruthless and powerful Borgia family's deadly intrigues of murder and betrayal It is known as the City of God—but Rome at the dawn of the sixteenth century is an unholy place where opulence, poverty, and decadence cohabitate sinfully under the ruthless rule of Rodrigo Borgia, the debauched Pope Alexander VI. Englishman Nicholas Dawson is secretary to the ineffectual ambassador of Florence and, as such, finds himself linked to Borgias' murderous machinations, specifically the brutal power plays of the warlord Cesare, the pope's bastard son. A skilled liar, conspirator, spy, and manipulator—a man drawn to power and the pleasures of excess—Dawson coolly plays his part in Rome's draconian political dramas with an eye to personal gain and no true allegiance to any side or player. But his attraction to a beautiful and very dangerous young man soon threatens to bring Dawson's...