An old grudge erupts into violence as Odd Tangle-Hair refuses to back down from the men he believes shamed his father and betrayed their heritage by turning away from the old gods in favor of the White Christ. But when the violence escalates and Odd's family bears the brunt of it, he must leave his beloved Iceland behind and find his own way in the world. The golden age of Viking conquest is fading when he takes to the seas with his rag-tag crew, but they will voyage to primitive Lapland, ...

A crime novel set in Ancient Rome. A city under the thrall of a tyrant, where deceit and death walk hand-in-hand.DECEIT, TYRANNY, DEATH.Games the Romans play best.Sextus Ingentius Verpa, imperial senator, notorious informer and scheming minion of the despotic Emperor Domitian, has been butchered in the night.The Emperor has decreed that punishment will be swift and has commissioned Gaius Plinius Secundus – better known as Pliny the Younger – to investigate. P...

In this second volume of his saga, Odd Tangle-Hair travels to Russia to take up his post as skald to Harald, the young renegade prince of Norway. Intrigue and danger await him when Odd finds himself 'caught between two wolves'—the arrogant, bullying Harald and his sworn enemy, Ingigerd, Grand Princess of Novgorod, who schemes against Harald by seducing Odd. While political intrigue swirls around him, a Pecheneg horde explodes across the steppe, and Odd must use his wits to rescue the besie...

The Varangian is the final entry in Bruce Macbain's Odd Tangle-Hair Saga and brings Odd's challenging adventures to a climactic and satisfying finish. On a secret diplomatic mission to the Emperor's court in Miklagard, the Viking's name for Constantinople, Odd meets the members of the fearsome Varangian Guard whose elite Viking members served as the Emperor's personal bodyguards. Harald, his former master and the man he's been sent to murder, now serves among the guards. Court int...

Here are three great historical crime novels in one volume.ROMAN GAMES: Rome, AD 95 – a city under the thrall of a tyrant. It is up to Gaius Plinius Secundus – better known to posterity as Pliny the Younger – to investigate the murder of one of emperor's favourites. He has just 15 days to solve the case, 15 days that will threaten Pliny's conscience, his life and the stability of Rome itself.ONE FOR SORROW: Amid the splendour and the squalor of sixth-century Byzantium. A tr...

THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 109 ADThe frontier province of Bithynia is a cesspit of sedition, rotten with corruption and seething with hatred of Rome. When a rich Roman official is found dead on a desolate hillside; two riderless horses tethered in a nearby wood, it is assumed he was killed as a protest against Emperor Trajan's unlimited power.But Pliny the Younger, newly appointed Governor of Bithynia, is not so sure.Who was the other rider? What were the two of them doing i...

Rome, September AD 96. When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, his slaves are suspected. Pliny, a very respectable young senator and lawyer, is ordered by the emperor Domitian to investigate. However, the Ludi Romani, “the Roman Games,” have just begun, and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be b...

Sometimes murder is only a distraction from the real betrayal.Pliny, a respectable young senator and lawyer, is the newly appointed governor of Bithynia, a turbulent frontier province rotting with corruption and seething with hatred of Rome. When a high Roman official is found murdered on a desolate hillside miles from the capital, Pliny must untangle numerous threads in the investigation, including a barbarian god whose devotees may include a murderer, a clever and unscrupulous fa...

It was a summer of glorious triumph for the mighty Roman Republic. Her invincible legions had brought all foreign enemies to their knees. But in Rome there was no peace. The streets were flooded with the blood of murdered citizens, and there were rumors of more atrocities to come. Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger was convinced a conspiracy existed to overthrow the government, a sinister cabal that could only be destroyed from within. But admission into the traitorous society of evil c...

Blackmail, corruption, treachery, murder—the glory that was Rome

As the autumn storms of 1271 ravage the East Anglian coast, Crowner Ralf finds the corpse of a brutally murdered soldier in the woods near Tyndal Priory. The dagger in the man’s chest is engraved with a strange, cursive design, and the body is wrapped in a crusader’s cloak. Was this the act of a member of the Assassin sect, or was the weapon meant to mislead? Ralf’s decision to take the corpse to the priory for advice may be reasonable, but he is soon caught up in a maelstrom of conflict, ...

The medicus Ruso and his wife, Tilla, are back in the borderlands of Britannia, this time helping to tend the builders of Hadrian's Great Wall. Having been forced to move off their land, the Britons are distinctly on edge.Then Ruso's recently arrived clerk, Candidus, goes missing. A native boy thinks he sees a body being hidden inside the wall's half-finished stonework, and a worrying rumor begins to spread. When soldiers ransack the nearby farms looking for Candidus, Tilla's tenta...