A major reassessment of the vikings and their legacyThe Vikings maintain their grip on our imagination, but their image is too often distorted by myth. It is true that they pillaged, looted, and enslaved. But they also settled peacefully and traveled far from their homelands in swift and sturdy ships to explore. The Age of the Vikings tells the full story of this exciting period in history. Drawing on a wealth of written, visual, and archaeological evidenc...

In this book a MacArthur Award-winning scholar argues for a radically new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Overturning the received narrative of Europe's military and religious conquest and colonization of the region, Anders Winroth contends that rather than acting as passive recipients, Scandinavians converted to Christianity because it was in individual chieftains' political, economic, and cultural interests to do so....

Canon law touched nearly every aspect of medieval society, including many issues we now think of as purely secular. It regulated marriages, oaths, usury, sorcery, heresy, university life, penance, just war, court procedure, and Christian relations with religious minorities. Canon law also regulated the clergy and the Church, one of the most important institutions in the Middle Ages. This Cambridge History offers a comprehensive survey of canon law, both chronologically and thematically. Wr...

For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. The attack on Lindisfarne was a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090.Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls 'the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact...

The world's most feared assassin hones her craft...and her blade.The Silent Assassins of the Red Desert aren't much for conversation, and Celeana Sardothien wouldn't have it any other way. She's not there to chatter, she's there to learn their ways. Quiet suits her just fine-until she begins to suspect there's a traitor in the fortress, and she must determine which of the mute and mysterious assassins is her deadly adversary.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this “deeply engrossing thriller” (The Washington Post) from the undisputed master of the legal thriller.“The Racketeer is guilty of only one thing: keeping us engaged until the very last page.”—USA TodayIn the history of the United States, only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just ...

No masters. No limits. No regrets.Aelin Galathynius takes her place as queen in the fourth book in this complete, #1 bestselling Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, author of the Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series.Celaena Sardothien has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight.She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die for her. She ...

New York Times Bestseller“An exceptional thriller. It left my nerves jangling for hours after I finished the last page.” –Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Shutter Island“Imagine drifting off every night knowing that your memories will be wiped away by morning. That’s the fate of Christine Lucas, whose bewildering internal world is rendered with chilling intimacy in this debut literary th...

THE RUNAWAY GLOBAL BESTSELLER'Gripping, enthralling - a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read.' SJ Watson, bestselling author of BEFORE I GO TO SLEEPRachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as...

A new edition of the "brilliantly original and highly sophisticated" study of saint worship after the fall of the Roman Empire ( Library Journal).In this groundbreaking work, Peter Brown explores how the worship of saints and their corporeal remains became central to religious life in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, earthly remnants served as a heavenly connection, and their veneration is a fascinating window into the...

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the len...

"An indispensable point of departure for anyone interested in the cult of the saints in the Middle Ages." —Eamon Duffy, The New York Review of BooksFrom its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints—the holy dead. This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant...