Giles Kristian

PN - 941/1 | God of Vengeance (The Rise of Sigurd #1) by Giles Kristian:

 

Norway AD 785.
A land of petty kingdoms and ambitious men...

When King Gorm betrays Jarl Harald and puts his family to the sword, he makes a terrible mistake. He fails to kill Harald's youngest son, Sigurd.

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• Hunted by powerful men and hiding in a sacred fen, Sigurd believes the gods have turned their backs on his family. His kin are dead or captured. His village is attacked and its people taken as slaves. Honour is lost.
  Yet all men know that Ódin, whose name means frenzy, is drawn to chaos and bloodshed as a raven is to the slaughtered dead - and Sigurd means to spill blood.
  
  Alone but for a small band of loyal men including his red-bearded friend Svein, his father's right-hand man Olaf, and Asgot the godi, Sigurd hungers to avenge the murder of his family.
  In an attempt to catch Ódin's eye, the young man sacrifices himself - as the god once did - and it is during this ritual ordeal that Sigurd is shown a vision.
  The Wolf.
  The Bear.
  The Serpent.
  The Eagle.
  

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PN - 941/2 | Winter's Fire (The Rise of Sigurd #2) by Giles Kristian:

 

Norway, AD 785.
A vow of vengeance must be kept ...
Sigurd Haraldarson has proved himself a great warrior . . . and a dangerous enemy.
He has gone a long way towards avenging the murder of his family.

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• And yet the oath-breaker King Gorm, who betrayed Sigurd’s father, still lives. And so long as he draws breath, the scales remain unbalanced.
  The sacred vow to avenge his family burns in Sigurd’s veins, but he must be patient and bide his time.
  
  He knows that he and his band of warriors are not yet strong enough to confront the treacherous king. They need silver, they need more spear-brothers to rally to the young Viking’s banner—but more than these, they need to win fame upon the battlefield.
  

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PN - 941/3 | Wings of the Storm (The Rise of Sigurd #3) by Giles Kristian:

 

Norway, AD 785.
A wild place, a place of blood, a place where the gods hold sway . . .

Sigurd Haraldarson and his oathsworn band are winning fame and reputation. But to confront his hated enemy - the oath-breaker and betrayer King Gorm - they must win riches too.

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• When a daring raid goes wrong, Sigurd finds himself a prisoner of the powerful Jarl Guthrum. Bound like a slave, he is taken to the sacred temple at Ubsola to face the sacrificial knife.
  
  But here Sigurd discovers a potent relic: Gungnir, a great spear that would give him the power to assemble a host strong enough to challenge King Gorm, and avenge the betrayal of his father and the murder of his family.
  

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PN - 947/1 | Blood Eye (Raven #1) by Giles Kristian:

For two years Osric has lived a simple life, apprentice to the mute old carpenter who took him in when others would have him cast out.

But when Norsemen from across the sea burn his village they also destroy his new life, and Osric finds himself a prisoner of these warriors. Their chief, Sigurd the Lucky, believes the Norns have woven this strange boy's fate together with his own, and Osric begins to sense glorious purpose among this Fellowship of warriors.

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• Immersed in the Norsemen's world and driven by their lust for adventure, Osric proves a natural warrior and forges a blood bond with Sigurd, who renames him Raven.
  
  But the Norsemen's world is a savage one, where loyalty is often repaid in blood and where a young man must become a killer to survive.
  

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PN - 947/2 | Sons of Thunder (Raven #2) by Giles Kristian:

 

The sequel to Giles Kristian's acclaimed historical debut, Raven: Blood Eye, this brutal, bloody and unputdownable novel continues the story of the Viking Raven and his warrior brotherhood.

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• Never betray a Fellowship and expect to get away with your life...
  
  Raven and his Wolfpack of Norsemen have been double crossed. The traitor Ealdred seeks to sell a holy book to the Emperor Charlemagne which will ensure riches beyond his wildest dreams. Greed drives him forward, but a band of fearsome warriors is in pursuit across the sea to Charlemagne's Frankish empire -- with the bloodiest of revenge on their minds.
  

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PN - 947/3 | Odin's Wolves (Raven #3) by Giles Kristian:

 

They came from the North and fought their way through France and Spain. Now this fearless band of brothers sets sail for the greatest city in the world.

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• Plunging through the living hell of Pope Leo’s shattered, perverted Rome, the dragon-faced ships of Sigurd the Lucky are manned by a strange and fearsome crew: bearded Norse raiders who sacrifice their vanquished enemies to Odin, brave Greek warriors, a Moor, and an English monk.
  
  Among the Norsemen is Raven, a young man of uncertain parentage who is able—from the depths of his blood-spotted eye—to glimpse the future. Robbed of the woman he loves, Raven is destined to play a cunning role in the boldest of attacks.
  

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PN - 951/1 | Lancelot (The Arthurian Tales #1) by Giles Kristian:

 

The legions of Rome are a fading memory. Enemies stalk the fringes of Britain. And Uther Pendragon is dying. Into this fractured and uncertain world the boy is cast, a refugee from fire, murder and betrayal. An outsider whose only companions are a hateful hawk and memories of the lost.

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• Yet he is gifted, and under the watchful eyes of Merlin and the Lady Nimue he will hone his talents and begin his journey to manhood. He will meet Guinevere, a wild, proud and beautiful girl, herself outcast because of her gift. And he will be dazzled by Arthur, a warrior who carries the hopes of a people like fire in the dark. But these are times of struggle and blood, when even friendship and love seem doomed to fail.
  
  The gods are vanishing beyond the reach of dreams. Treachery and jealousy rule men’s hearts and the fate of Britain itself rests on a sword’s edge.
  

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PN - 951/2 | Camelot (The Arthurian Tales #2) by Giles Kristian:

 

Following his acclaimed Sunday Times bestseller, Lancelot, Giles Kristian's new novel returns us to the realms of Arthurian legend . . .

Britain is a land riven by anarchy, slaughter, famine, filth and darkness. Its armies are destroyed, its heroes dead, or missing. Arthur and Lancelot fell in the last great battle and Merlin has not been these past ten years.

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• But in a small, isolated monastery in the west of England, a young boy is suddenly plucked from his simple existence by the ageing warrior, Gawain. It seems he must come to terms with his legacy and fate as the son of the most celebrated yet most infamous of Arthur's warriors: Lancelot.
  
  For this is the story of Galahad, Lancelot’s son – the reluctant warrior who dared to keep the dream of Camelot alive . . .
  

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PN - 1011/2 | Blackstone (Deepwoods Saga #2) by Honor Raconteur

“Well, let’s have it. Where do you think we should go?”

“Saoleord.”

Siobhan and Conli both froze. Saoleord? The city that no one ever visited and only natives could find? “Why?” Conli asked slowly, blue eyes studying Fei’s face.

Fei seemed to take a breath before admitting quietly, “Because I think we’ll need help very soon.”

“Fei, I’m lost. Why would you want to go home?”

“I have seen this pattern before. The last time that one country was pushed into an economical depression by another country, it led to war.”

Siobhan’s blood froze. “War?

“Can a war even be possible?” Conli objected. “A skirmish I can see, one guild or one city attacking another is very possible. But to have a war, an actual war as you mean it, you’d have to get several main guilds to cooperate enough to fight in a united front. We can barely get them to agree on trade agreements.”

Fei shook his head, mouth set in a grim line. “Orin is desperate. They will band together to pillage and loot, if nothing else. I tell you, the history that I learned showed this exact set of events happening over and over again.”

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PN - 1011/2.5 | Origins (Deepwoods Saga #2.5) by Honor Raconteur

A Deepwoods Book - A Collection of Deepwoods Short Stories

As Rune grows curious about his new fellow guildmates, he decides he needs to hear their stories in full. So he asks.

Set in the midst of "Blackstone" as the group travels to Saoleord, learn with Rune how Deepwoods came to be.

In true Wynnguardian, this is the story of Deepwoods.

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F - 2935 | Ecstasy by Mary Sharratt

In the glittering hotbed of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Vienna, one woman’s life would define and defy an era -

Gustav Klimt gave Alma her first kiss.
Gustav Mahler fell in love with her at first sight and proposed only a few weeks later.
Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius abandoned all reason to pursue her.

Poet and novelist Franz Werfel described her as “one of the very few magical women that exist.”

But who was this woman who brought these most eminent of men to their knees? In Ecstasy, Mary Sharratt finally gives one of the most controversial and complex women of her time the center stage.

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F - 2938 | Illuminations by Mary Sharratt

One of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages, Hildegard von Bingen—Benedictine abbess, healer, composer, saint—experienced mystic visions from a very young age. Offered by her noble family to the Church at the age of eight, she lived for years in forced silence.

But through the study of books and herbs, through music and the kinship of her church sisters, Hildegard found her way from a life of submission to a calling that celebrated the divine mother and the glories all around us.

In this brilliantly researched and insightful novel, Mary Sharratt offers a deeply moving portrait of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed, a triumphant exploration of the life she might well have lived.

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F - 2937 | Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

Daughters of the Witching Hill brings history to life in a vivid and wrenching account of a family sustained by love as they try to survive the hysteria of a witch-hunt.

Bess Southerns, an impoverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft, as well as her best friend, who ultimately turns to dark magic.

When a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate, eager to make his name as a witch finder, plays neighbors and family members against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights.

Sharratt interweaves well-researched historical details of the 1612 Pendle witch-hunt with a beautifully imagined story of strong women, family, and betrayal.

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F - 2936 | The Vanishing Point by Mary Sharratt

In the tradition of Philippa Gregory’s smart, transporting fiction comes this tale of dark suspense, love, and betrayal, featuring two star-crossed sisters, one lost and the other searching.

Bright and inquisitive, Hannah Powers was raised by a father who treated her as if she were his son. While her beautiful and reckless sister, May, pushes the limits of propriety in their small English town, Hannah harbors her own secret: their father has given her an education forbidden to women. But Hannah’s secret serves her well when she journeys to colonial Maryland to reunite with May, who has been married off to a distant cousin after her sexual misadventures ruined her marriage prospects in England.

As Hannah searches for May, who has disappeared, she finds herself falling in love with her brother-in-law...

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F - 2934 | The Library of Legends by Janie Chang

“The Library of Legends is a gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with mist and magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937 – only to discover that danger stalks them from within. Janie Chang pens pure enchantment!” — Kate Quinn, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress

China, 1937. When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of students, faculty and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by the constant threat of aerial attack.

And it is not just the refugees who are at risk; Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure: a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.

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PN - 1010/1 | Going Back for Romeo (The Curse of Clan Ross #1) by L.L. Muir

Alone, with a Highlander, in his castle, on a cold dark night...

(Okay, so it wasn't that cold.)

Jillian MacKay is being conned by a pair of eighty-year-old witches. They're convinced she's the perfect sucker to test a prophecy and they're willing to bury her alive to prove it.

Once she escapes and finds herself in 15th Century Scotland, she believes her return home depends on a heroic deed--she must rescue a plaid-clad Romeo and Juliet before their story can end in tragedy. The monster standing in her way, however, is a handsome Highlander who might just be her own Romeo...a Romeo she must leave behind.

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PN - 1010/2 | Not Without Juliet (The Curse of Clan Ross #2) by L.L. Muir

She will let nothing stop her...
Juliet Bell has a hit man, the FBI, a long-lost sister, and a handful of handsome Highlanders hunting her through time. But she's not going back until she gets what's hers. And her hunters won't go back either--not without Juliet.

He's had a change of heart...
Quinn's timing stinks. He's about to die a martyr, which would have been fine with him a year before, but 15th century Scotland has revived his survival instincts and he's decided he wants to live after all. His only hope? Making one of his foes believe Quinn can control the future.

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PN - 1010/3 | Collecting Isobelle (The Curse of Clan Ross #3) by L.L. Muir

Being buried alive taught her nothing...

Believing that true love can never be hers, Isobelle plunges herself into danger, yet again, for the sake of desperate lovers. But this time, the man who condemns her is much more powerful than any priest, and it is not her death he seeks, but something she considers much worse.

He knows when someone is lying--unless it is himself...

Gaspar is content to hide behind the mask of God’s Dragon until a fiery Scotswoman bursts into his life. He believes his thick scales can protect him while he bends her to his will, but he is sorely mistaken.

And he’s not the only one determined to collect Isobelle...

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PN - 1010/4 | Wickham (The Curse of Clan Ross #4) by L.L. Muir

Previously published as What About Wickham?

Ivy didn't start out wicked...
Telling a carefully chosen truth is the only way to get her parents to send her to Scotland for the summer. But once she's there, Ivy learns how horribly wicked some people can be--and just how far she will go for love.

Wickham shouldn't let his guard down...
As male twins born to Clan Muir, Wickham and his brother are destined to wield great power. And one of Wickham's talents is knowing that Ivy is meant to be his. Cautiously, he draws her into his secret life and exposes her to his strange family.

Wickham is book 4 in a continuing series. JAMES is next.
The Muir Witches are also scattered throughout the Ghosts of Culloden Moor series.

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F - 2933 | His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet

The year is 1869.
A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.

A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence.

Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.

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F - 2932 | The Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory

Berlin, 1989.
As the wall between East and West falls, Miriam Winter cares for her dying father, Henryk. When he cries out for someone named Frieda – and Miriam discovers an Auschwitz tattoo hidden under his watch strap – Henryk’s secret history begins to unravel.

Searching for more clues of her father’s past, Miriam finds an inmate uniform from the Ravensbrück women’s camp concealed among her mother’s things. Within its seams are dozens of letters to Henryk written by Frieda.

The letters reveal the disturbing truth about the ‘Rabbit Girls’, young women experimented on at the camp. And amid their tales of sacrifice and endurance, Miriam pieces together a love story that has been hidden away in Henryk’s heart for almost fifty years.

Inspired by these extraordinary women, Miriam strives to break through the walls she has built around herself. Because even in the darkest of times, hope can survive.

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F - 2931 | The Puzzle Women by Anna Ellory

Berlin, 1989.
Siblings Rune and Lotte are shaken awake by Mama and told to follow her quietly into the night. Last time they snuck away from Papa, with Mama bruised and broken, they were back within a week. But this time they are starting a new life, Mama says—where nobody can ever hurt them again.

Ten years later,
the memories of their escape are blurry; Mama is long gone and the siblings are back at Papa’s house. But when they receive a mysterious notebook that seems to have come from Mama, Papa tears it apart. Could there be more to their past than they’ve been led to believe?

With Rune paralysed by fear, Lotte takes their fate into her own hands. When she learns about the ‘Puzzle Women’ working tirelessly to reconstruct files shredded by the former secret police, she begs them to help her piece Mama’s story back together.

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F - 2930 | The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns

Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.

Japan, 1957.
Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man—an American sailor, a gaijin—and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family.
When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.

America, present day.
Tori Kovač, caring for her dying father, finds a letter containing a shocking revelation—one that calls into question everything she understood about him, her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori’s journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption.

In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.

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F - 2929/1 | A.D. 30 (A.D. #1) by Ted Dekker

A sweeping epic set in the harsh deserts of Arabia and ancient Palestine...

A war that rages between kingdoms on the earth and in the heart.

The harrowing journey of the woman at the center of it all.

Step back in time to the year of our Lord...A.D. 30.

The outcast daughter of one of the most powerful Bedouin sheikhs in Arabia, Maviah is called on to protect the very people who rejected her.
When their enemies launch a sudden attack with devastating consequences, Maviah escapes with the help of two of her father's warriors--Saba who speaks more with is sword than his voice and Judah, a Jew who comes from a tribe that can read the stars.
Their journey will be fraught with terrible danger. If they can survive the vast forbidding sands of a desert that is deadly to most, they will reach a brutal world subjugated by kings and emperors. There Maviah must secure an unlikely alliance with King Herod of the Jews.

But Maviah's path leads her unexpectedly to another man.

An enigmatic teacher who speaks of a way in this life which offers greater power than any kingdom. His name is Yeshua, and his words turn everything known on its head.

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F - 2929/2 | A.D. 33 (A.D. #2) by Ted Dekker

New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker delivers the gripping story of Maviah, a slave who becomes a queen in Arabia, A.D. 33.

Enter a story full of intrigue, heart-wrenching defeat, uncompromising love and staggering victory-one that re-examines everything you thought you knew about the heart of Jesus's stunning message and the power that follows for those who follow his easily forgotten way.

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F - 2928 | Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories.

Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.

In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward.

He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age.

In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

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F - 2927 | Refiner's Fire by Mark Helprin

An orphaned immigrant's experiences take him from the Hudson River Valley to Harvard, off to sea on a British merchant ship, then finally back to his birthplace, where he serves as an Israeli soldier in the Yom Kippur War.

A cross between Fielding´s Tom Jones and the story of Moses, Refiner´s Fire is a great and colorful adventure that ends in a crucible of battle, suffering, and death, from which Marshall Pearl rises purely by the grace of God.

Addressing the holy and the profane, but never heavy handedly, it is not so much a meditation on the fate of the Jews after the Holocaust, the rise of Israel, and the spirit of America, as it is an elegy and a song in which the powers of life and regeneration are shown to gorgeous effect.

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