The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Author: Elspeth Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307428443
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Book Description
Dorothy Dunnett has earned worldwide acclaim for the masterful blending of historical fact and imagination in her two series of novels set in brilliantly reconstructed fifteenth- and sixteenth-century landscapes. The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II is an encyclopedic resource that completes and expands the reach of the first Companion in documenting the historical and literary riches of Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo novels. In this second guide, Elspeth Morrison not only covers the final three Niccolo novels for the first time, but also provides a wealth of additional information about all of the earlier novels and highlights the links between the two now-completed series. Once again, she illuminates the real figures and events and the cultural and literary allusions Dunnett weaves into her works, translating foreign phrases and offering up fascinating background details, from the history of golf and the argot of galley slaves to the uses of puffins and polar bears. Together with the first Companion, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II provides a complete and essential guide to the world of Lymond and Niccolo.

The Lymond Poetry

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141012447
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Dorothy Dunnett died in November 2001. She left behind this anthology, chosen by her from the hundreds of poems that she used in her series of novels known as The Lymond Chronicles. It contains an extensive collection of Renaissance poetry, featuring work by Thomas Wyatt and King James I, extracts from the Psalms and even an anonymous poem called Monologue of a Drunkard. As Dorothy herself writes, here in one volume is the poetry of love, of folk-humour and ballad, the songs of Persian poets and of the troubadours, translated where need be into English.

The Disorderly Knights

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307762300
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 681

Book Description
This third volume in The Lymond Chronicles, the highly renowned series of historical novels takes place in 1551, when Francis Crawford of Lymond is dispatched to embattled Malta, to assist the Knights of Hospitallers in defending the island against the Turks. But shortly the swordsman and scholar discovers that the greatest threat to the Knights lies within their own ranks, where various factions vie secretly for master.

The Curse of the Mistwraith (The Wars of Light and Shadow, Book 1)

Author: Janny Wurts
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007346905
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 786

Book Description
BOOK ONE IN THE GROUNDBREAKING SERIES, THE WARS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW A powerful, layered weaving of myth, prose and pure imagination – Curse of the Mistwraith opens an epic fantasy series perfect for fans of The Dark Tower and Earthsea.

Niccolo Rising

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307762351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 764

Book Description
In this first book of The House of Niccolò series, the author of the Lymond Chronicles introduces a new hero, Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire. With the bravura storytelling and pungent authenticity of detail she brought to her acclaimed Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett, grande dame of the historical novel, presents The House of Niccolò series. The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges. Niccolò Rising, Book One of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. Jousting is the genteel pastime, and successful merchants are, of necessity, polyglot. Street smart, brilliant at figures, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth, Dunnett's hero rises from wastrel to prodigy in a breathless adventure that wins him the hand of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two powerful enemies. From a riotous and potentially murderous carnival in Flanders, to an avalanche in the Alps and a pitched battle on the outskirts of Naples, Niccolò Rising combines history, adventure, and high romance in the tradition stretching from Alexandre Dumas to Mary Renault.

Queens' Play

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141956720
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 630

Book Description
Before George R. R. Martin there was Dorothy Dunnett . . . PERFECT for fans of A Game of Thrones. 'She is a brilliant story teller, The Lymond Chronicles will keep you reading late into the night, desperate to know the fate of the characters you have come to care deeply about.' The Times Literary Supplement Queen's Play is the second book in the series ----------------------------- 'The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own' 1548 and seven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots, betrothed to her cousin the Dauphin, heir to the French throne, has been dispatched to France. But far from home and vulnerable, surrounded by the double-dealing and debauchery of a dangerous and unpredictable court, she suffers a series of 'accidents'. Her mother, Scotland's Queen Dowager, orders Francis Crawford of Lymond to protect Mary, believing that at the very heart of Henri II's glittering, decadent court is an assassin hired to kill the infant monarch. Lymond must secretly hunt down this individual before he himself is exposed . . . 'Vivid, engaging, densely plotted -- are almost certainly destined to be counted among the classics of popular fiction' New York Times 'Melodrama of the most magnificent kind' The Guardian

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Author: Elspeth Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375725873
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Here is a lovingly assembled, essential A-Z companion to Dorothy Dunnett’s brilliant Lymond Chronicles and the first five novels in the House of Niccolò series. Elspeth Morrison has re-created the author’s exhaustive original research, documenting her myriad sources and literary references. Foreign phrases are translated; poems and quotations presented in full; historical figures and events fleshed out; subtle allusions–and there are many–noted. From the origins of the Arabic drink qahveh to a recipe for quince paste, from the medical uses of ants and alum, to Zacco, Zenobia, and Zoroaster, this easy-to-use A-to-Z reference richly illuminates the intricacies of the complex and far-flung Renaissance world Dorothy Dunnett’s creations so colorfully inhabit.

King Hereafter

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1405934417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 880

Book Description
'A storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about pace, suspense and imaginative invention'New York Times THE REAL MACBETH . . . It is the eleventh century and in the isles of Orkney a young boy is born. He is named Thorfinn, baptized as Macbeth. To the north are the warring Vikings and south lies Alba - the Scottish mainland. Orkney is the prize in between, and an unlikely place from which a young man might launch a bid as ruler of a united Scotland. Yet Thorfinn is unlike other men. He has a warrior's courage and the wiliness of the underdog. By his side stands his wife Groa, as shrewd and valiant as her husband. Together they will navigate the treacherous waters of the new millennium, uniting a divided nation and birthing a legend that will survive a thousand years. Thorfinn Macbeth will be King Hereafter . . . 'Stunning' Washington Post

The Hallowed Hunt

Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061795976
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Book Description
A magnificent epic tale of devotion, possession, obsession, and strange destiny from the author of the Hugo Award-winning Paladin of Souls Lois McMaster Bujold The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile -- and Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff must transport the body to its burial place and the accused killer, the Lady Ijada, to judgment. With the death of the old Hallow King imminent and the crown in play, the road they must travel together is a dangerous one. And though he is duty-bound to deliver his prisoner to an almost certain death, Ijada may be the only one Ingrey dares trust. For a monstrous malevolence holds the haunted lord in its sway -- and a great and terrible destiny has been bestowed upon him by the gods, the damned, and the dead.

Gemini

Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141946318
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 951

Book Description
The exquisitely-researched standalone prequel series to Dorothy Dunnett's revered Lymond Chronicles, following the ancestors of Francis Crawford of Lymond in Continental Europe. Gemini is Book Eight in The House of Niccolo series. ----------------------------- 'Landing in Berwick that wild, February day, Nicholas de Fleury had known that he was mad to come back to Scotland, but that it had to be done.' The winter of 1477 is coming to a close as Nicholas, his fortunes restored, returns to the country he nearly ruined to make amends and to settle old scores - and is immediately set upon by assassins. Yet it is not long before he is established at the court of King James III, using his wits and wiles to help steer the kingdom through the storms of trade and war ravaging the continent. With his wife Gelis once more by his side, Nicholas knows a reckoning must be made with his estranged family as the final loose strands of his story entwine together in the concluding volume of the House of Niccolo. 'An extraordinary achievement' Daily Telegraph