Book picks similar to
Eskkar & Trella - The Beginning by Sam Barone
historical-fiction
sam-barone
fantasy
mesopotamia
Stonehenge
Bernard Cornwell - 1999
Bernard Cornwell's epic novel Stonehenge catapults us into a powerful and vibrant world of ritual and sacrifice at once timeless and wholly original-a tale of patricide, betrayal, and murder; of bloody brotherly rivalry: and of the never-ending quest for power, wealth, and spiritual fulfillment.Three brothers-deadly rivals-are uneasily united in their quest to create a temple to their gods. There is Lengar, the eldest, a ruthless warrior intent on replacing his father as chief of the tribe of Ratharryn; Camaban, his bastard brother, a sorcerer whose religious fervor inspires the plan for Stonehenge; and Saban, the youngest, through whose expertise the temple will finally be completed. Divided by blood but united-precariously-by a shared vision, the brothers begin erecting their mighty ring of granite, aligning towering stones to the movement of the heavenly bodies, and raising arches to appease and unite their gods. Caught between the zealousness of his ambitious brothers, Saban becomes the true leader of his people, a peacemaker who will live to see the temple built in the name of salvation and regeneration.Bernard Cornwell, long admired for his rousing narrative and meticulous historical imaginings, has here delivered his masterpiece, the most compelling and powerful human drama of its kind since Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth and Edward Rutherford's Sarum. His re-creation of civilization as it might have been in 2000 B.C. at once amplifies the mystery of his subject and makes the world of Stonehenge come alive as never before.
The Age of the Vikings
Anders Winroth - 2014
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 evidence, Anders Winroth captures the innovation and pure daring of the Vikings without glossing over their destructive heritage. He not only explains the Viking attacks, but also looks at Viking endeavors in commerce, politics, discovery, and colonization, and reveals how Viking arts, literature, and religious thought evolved in ways unequaled in the rest of Europe. The Age of the Vikings sheds new light on the complex society, culture, and legacy of these legendary seafarers.
Time and Again: Time Was / Times Change
Nora Roberts - 2001
Though Caleb knows he belongs in the future, how can he leave the past, and Liberty, behind?Times ChangeCynical Jacob Hornblower has followed his brother, Caleb, back in time, hoping to convince him to return home. His mission is soon forgotten, however, when he finds himself captivated by Liberty's spitfire sister, Sunny. But can a man who is down on love truly understand the unbounded strength of the human heart?
Pearl Harbor
Newt Gingrich - 2007
Roosevelt's speech on December 8, 1941, lasted a mere six and half minutes. But his words and tone--in a monologue that would later be named the Infamy Speech--sent ripples into a nation and a world that continue even today. The historical implications that emerged from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were unprecedented, launching America not only into the depths of a dangerous war, but forever altering the safety and comfort of everyday living. December 8th became a day of speaking out publicly and declaring war; of action, battle, plotting, and victories. This date's significance is resonant and profound as an indelible moment in American history.Fresh from their series on the American Civil War, bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen now launch a new epic adventure by applying their imaginations and knowledge to the "Date of Infamy"--the attack on Pearl Harbor.Pearl Harbor covers the full spectrum of characters and events from that historic moment, from national leaders and admirals to the views of ordinary citizens caught in the chaos of war. From the chambers of the Emperor of Japan to the American White House, from the decks of aircraft carriers to the playing fields of the Japanese Naval Academy, this powerful story stretches from the nightmare slaughter of China in the 1930s to the lonely office of Commander James Watson, an American cryptographer, who suspects the impending catastrophic attack. It is a story of intrigue, double-dealing, the horrific brutality of war, and the desperate efforts of men of reason on both sides to prevent a titanic struggle that becomes inevitable.Gingrich and Forstchen's now critically acclaimed approach, which they term "active history," examines how a change in but one decision might have profoundly altered American history. In Pearl Harbor, they pose the question of how the presence of but one more man within the Japanese attacking force could have transfigured the war. More than a retelling, the book also serves as a potent warning, valid still today as an example of what happens when communications and understanding breaks down, and a nation is ill-prepared for the onslaught that might ensue.A compelling, meticulously researched saga, Pearl Harbor is also a novel of valor about those who took part in this cataclysmic moment in world history. It inaugurates a dramatic new Pacific War series that begins with the terrifying account of the day that started it all.Praise for Pearl Harbor:"A politician and a novelist, each an accomplished historian in his own right, are emerging as master authors of alternative history. In this 'what if' treatment of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen combine their talents to make the diplomacy as suspenseful as the combat, even for readers who know what happens next---or think they know. The authors' mastery of both the broad sweep of events and the details of naval war and military technology give their counterfactual scenarios an unusual degree of plausibility, concluding with a version of the Japanese attack that guarantees a fictional Pacific war even more terrible than the one that began on December 7, 1941."-- Dennis Showalter, former president of the Society of Military Historians"The book is not only a great read, it is a fascinating historical story that applies today in Iraq as it did in the Western Pacific in the late '30s and '40s."---Captain Alex Fraser (Ret.) "Gingrich and Forstchen have done it again. Building on their successful collaboration on their Civil War trilogy that so skillfully combined real history with fiction, they have with Pearl Harbor happily inaugurated another new series. You will not want to put it down, but when you finish you will look, as I do, with great anticipation to the next book."---Chief of Police William J. Bratton, Los Angeles Police Department "Masterful storytelling that not only captures the heroic highs and hellish lows of that horrific day which lives on in infamy---it resonates with today's conflicts and challenges."---William E. Butterworth IV, New York Times Best-selling Author of The Saboteurs
In the Stone Circle
Elizabeth Cody Kimmel - 1998
From the moment they arrive, though, things prove to be anything but dull.
The Book of Crows
Sam Meekings - 2011
Two thousand years later, after a suspicious landslide near Lanzhou, a low-level bureaucrat searches for a missing colleague. A thirteenth century Franciscan monk, traversing the Silk Road, begins his extraordinary deathbed confession, while five hundred years earlier, a grieving Chinese poet is summoned to the Emperor's palace. In a series of delicately interlaced stories, Sam Meekings' richly poetic and gripping second novel follows the journeys of characters whose lives, separated by millennia, are all in some way touched by the mysterious Book of Crows - a mythical book in which the entire history of the world - past, present and future - is written down.
Baudolino
Umberto Eco - 2000
Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander-who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa-adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East-a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens. With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, this is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.
She Who Remembers
Linda Lay Shuler - 1988
A beautiful woman born in the American southwest into the long extinct Anasazi tribe, long before Columbus...whose blue eyes marked her as a witch and set her apart from the Indian tribe that raised her.Following her path of destiny in a vanished world of great stone cities and trackless wilderness warring tribes and mysterious trabelers from other lands, Kwani found love with Kokopelli, the Toltec magician, who rescued her from death and took her to the Place of the Eagle Clan. There she was transformed from an outcast to the Chosen of the Gods, where she became She Who Remembers and taught young girls the ancient secrets only women know...secrets that provided her with inner power to overcome and triumph--and change her life forever.
The Lost Temple
Tom Harper - 2007
This page-turner will take through the myths and legends of lost civilisations and into the heart of an ancient mystery...If you like Dan Brown, Clive Cussler and Scott Mariani, you'll love this!
'Like Dan Brown, Tom Harper knows how to ratchet up the tension.' - Choice'Totally fascinating' -- ***** Reader review'Really good book, I find it hard to put down' -- ***** Reader review'So thrilling I was reading it whenever I could' -- ***** Reader review'This is an amazing book, well written. My only critisism is that I couldn't put it down' -- ***** Reader review**********************************************************************A DEAD MAN. A HIDDEN CODE. A DEVASTATING SECRET.For three thousand years, the world's most dangerous treasure has been lost. Now the code that reveals its hiding place is about to be broken ...Sam Grant is a disgraced ex-SOE soldier and an adventurer by trade. But he has a secret: six years ago, a dying archaeologist entrusted him with his life's work - transcripts of mysterious writing found in a hidden cave on Crete. Deciphered, it could lead to one of the greatest prizes in history.But the treasure is as dangerous as it is valuable. The CIA wants it; so does the KGB. Helped by a brilliant Oxford professor, and a beautiful Greek archaeologist with her own secrets to hide, Grant is plunged into a labyrinth of ancient cults, forgotten mysteries and lost civilisations. But time is running out.The secrets of the distant past may hold the key to the newest threats of the modern world...
The Religion
Tim Willocks - 2006
Brace yourselves. May 1565. Suleiman the Magnificent, emperor of the Ottomans, has declared a jihad against the Knights of Saint John the Baptist. The largest armada of all time approaches the knights' Christian stronghold on the island of Malta. The Turks know the knights as the "Hounds of Hell." The knights call themselves "The Religion." In Messina, Sicily, a French countess, Carla La Penautier, seeks passage to Malta in a quest to find the son taken from her at his birth twelve years ago. The only man with the expertise and daring to help her is a Rabelaisian soldier of fortune, arms dealer, former janissary, and strapping Saxon adventurer by the name of Mattias Tannhauser. He agrees to accompany the lady to Malta, where, amid the most spectacular siege in military history, they must try to find the boy--whose name they do not know and whose face they have never seen--and pluck him from the jaws of Holy War. The Religion is the first book of the Tannhauser Trilogy, and from the first page of this epic account of the last great medieval conflict between East and West, it is clear we are in the hands of a master. Not since James Clavell has a novelist so powerfully and assuredly plunged readers headlong into another world and time. Anne Rice transformed the vampire novel. Stephen King reinvented horror. Now, in a spectacular tale of heroism, tragedy, and passion, Tim Willocks revivifies historical fiction.
Creation
Gore Vidal - 1981
-- and embellishes it with his own ironic humor, brilliant insights, and piercing observations. We meet a vast array of historical figures in a staggering novel of love, war, philosophy, and adventure . . . "There isn't a page of CREATION that doesn't inform and very few pages that do not delight."-- John Leonard, The New York Times
Isle of Woman
Piers Anthony - 1993
It is nothing less than the story of humanity itself, from its savage origins to its troubled future, told through the lives on one family reborn throughout history. At once grand in scope and intimate in human detail, "Isle of Woman" tells the story of a man and a woman born at the dawn of human history, separated by fate, yet united by an unquenchable passion that even time could not conquer: Blaze, the fireworker who raised his kind out of savagery, and Ember, the beautiful green-eyed woman who forever haunted his dreams. "Isle of Woman "is a powerful and prophetic masterwork from one of the bestselling storytellers of our time.
The Shield of Three Lions
Pamela Kaufman - 1983
But when her family is killed and her lands seized, Alix is forced to flee from the only home she’s ever known. Her one hope of restoring her inheritance is to plead her case to King Richard the Lion Heart, who is far away in France, preparing to go on his Crusade. Alix resolves to follow him. She cuts her hair, dresses as a boy, and takes the road south to London. Disguised as a beautiful young boy, Alix is more than befriended by the handsome and mysterious King Richard, even becoming his favorite page. Their relationship sets tongues wagging and places Alix in considerable danger as the battle for Jerusalem unfolds.
The Frontiersmen
Allan W. Eckert - 1967
Red man's revenge.Driven from their homeland, the Indians fought bitterly to keep a final stronghold east of the Mississippi. Savage cunning, strength, skill and knowledge of the wilderness were their weapons, and the Indians used them mercilessly. But they couldn't foresee the white men who would come later, men who loved the land as much as they did, who wanted it for their own. Men who learned the Indian tricks and matched brutality for brutality.From Eckert's acclaimed The Winning of America series, this book continues the tale of westward expansion, focusing on the history of the Northwest Territories & the Louisiana Purchase & relating the dramatic events of the Black Hawk War of 1832.
The Forest Laird: A Tale of William Wallace
Jack Whyte - 2010
So begins The Forest Laird, the first book in Jack Whyte’s masterful new trilogy.Wallace's story leads us through his many lives—as an outlaw and a fugitive, a hero and a patriot, a rebel and a kingmaker. He is the first heroic figure from the Scottish Wars of Independence brought blazingly to life in Jack Whyte's new trilogy, the Guardians, and will be followed by his two compatriots Robert the Bruce, King of Scots; and Sir James Douglas, known as The Black Douglas. Their exploits and escapades, desperate struggles and medieval savagery, high ideals and fierce patriotism are the stuff of legends, and the soul and substance of these epic novels.