In the ancient Greek city-state of Plataea, teenage warriors trained in the ways of the battlefield long before they reached the age of eighteen. They also trained in the vicious, no-holds-barred form of unarmed combat called pankration. Similar to today's Ultimate Fighting and MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), this extreme style of man-on-man battle was featured in the original Olympic games.And sometimes, those pankration techniques were used not just for glory on the battlefield or in t...

The Peloponnesian War has begun. An army of merciless Spartan invaders have arrived at the gates of Plataea, bent on obliterating the independent city-state and its inhabitants. Plataea's oldest allies, the Athenians, are spread too thin in their own campaigns to send help. Cut off and alone, the Plataeans have dug in behind their high walls for the coming attack, while the tyrannical Spartans prepare to lay siege.On a rugged mountain road, a young Plataean warrior named Nikias ride...

In The Wisdom of the Shire , Noble Smith sheds a light on the life-changing ideas tucked away inside the classic works of J. R. R. Tolkien and his most beloved creation—the stouthearted Hobbits.How can simple pleasures such as gardening, taking long walks, and eating delicious meals with friends make you significantly happier? Why is the act of giving presents on your birthday instead of getting them such a revolutionary idea? What should you do w...

Coinciding with the release of the first of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, his follow-up to the huge Lord of the Rings success, The Wisdom of the Shire is a practical and fun guide - for Tolkien fans everywhere - showing us how to apply the wisdom of The Hobbit to our everyday lives.Hobbits are those small but brave little people, whose courage, integrity and loyalty allow them to triumph against odds that might appear overwhelming to the rest o...

In 431 B.C., Ancient Greece experienced its own "Pearl Harbor"—a treacherous sneak attack that would mark the start of the bloody war between the democracy of Athens and the tyranny of Sparta. Caught between these superpowers, the independent city-state of Plataea became the arena where their battle for control of all of Greece would begin.In Plataea, the young Greek warrior Nikias dreams of glory in the Olympic games as he trains for the pankration—the no-holds-barred ulti...

The action-packed finale of the trilogy set during the epic war that tore apart ancient Greece from the award-winning author of Spartans at the Gates.Nikias of Plataea has survived battle, shipwreck, and torture. But now the young warrior must face his greatest challenge: leading the people of his city-state on a desperate exodus to Athens while being hunted down by the largest Spartan expeditionary force in history.From the burning forests of the le...

The charmingly eccentric Otto Draxinger appears to be your typical pipe-smoking Oxford professor, doing his best to preserve his sanity while his beloved former students are being slaughtered at the Western Front. But the American expatriate has diagnosed himself with the newly coined term “schizophrenia.” And he believes the nightmarish waking visions he’s been experiencing are caused by the psychological trauma of the catastrophe that is The Great War.But after a chance encounter...

A twisted tale of love lost, alluring demons, idiotic servants, beautiful ladies, magicians, spells, pirates, and duels, Stolen from Gypsies has been called a comedic tour de force comparable to Shakespeare. The unusual hero is British nobleman Ambrogio Smythe, a rich but comical hypochondriac. Obsessed by childhood memories of Gypsies, the frail but determined Ambrogio leaves his ancestral estate in Warwickshire and makes his way to Italy during the Napoleonic Wars. Happily maroo...

Following on from Tom Swan and the Head of St George, Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade is the next instalment of the fast-paced serialised novel set in the turbulent Europe of the fifteenth century.Fifteenth Century Europe. Tom Swan is not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for endin...

Following on from Tom Swan and the Head of St George, Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade is the next instalment of the fast-paced serialised novel set in the turbulent Europe of the fifteenth century.Fifteenth Century Europe. Tom Swan is not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for endin...

Fifteenth Century Europe. Tom Swan is not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for ending up in the midst of violence when he didn't mean to. Having used his wits to escape execution, he begins a series of adventures that take him to street duels in Italy, meetings with remarkable men - from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vlad Dracula - an...

An action-packed tale of betrayal and revenge set amid the war between Alexander the Great's generals and climaxing in the most spectacular battle of the ancient world.Satyrus and Melitta, twin heirs to a rich kingdom on the Black Sea, become desperate fugitives when their mother, the Scythian warrior-princess Srayanka, is cut down in a savage act of betrayal. Accompanied by their tutor, the Spartan Philokles, they must make a perilous journey west, pursued by ruth...