Scandal Takes a Holiday

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Century
ISBN: 9781844136797
Category : Detective and mystery stories
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
Lindsey Davis’s sixteenth novel in the bestselling Marcus Didius Falco series is a tale of scandal, piracy and deception. In the wealthy town of Ostia, our hero Falco appears to be enjoying a relaxing holiday. But when his girlfriend, Helena, arrives carrying a batch of old copies of the Daily Gazette – with the intention of catching up on the latest scandal – Falco is forced to admit to Petronius his real reasons for being there. “Infamia,” the pen name of the scribe who writes the gossip column for the Daily Gazette, has gone missing. His fellow scribes have employed Falco to find him and bring him back from his lazy, drunken truancy. However, Falco suspects that there is more to his absence than might at first appear. Before long, Falco’s enquiries lead him into the world of piracy and the discovery of criminal traditions long believed dead. Is this the right path toward finding Infamia? Why would pirates have taken him? And if they have, will he be found alive?

Season for Scandal

Author: Theresa Romain
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1420132431
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
When Edmund Ware, Baron Kirkpatrick, proposes a hasty marriage to save her reputation, Jane Tindall thinks it to be the perfect pairing, until secrets and scandals turn a proper marriage into a very improper affair. Original.

Ode to a Banker

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 1529374472
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
In the long, hot Roman Summer of AD74, Marcus Didius Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. Things get out of hand as usual. The event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who offers to publish Falco's work - a golden opportunity that rapidly palls. A visit to the Chrysippusscriptorium implicates him in a gruesome literary murder so when Petronius Longus, the over-worked vigiles enquiry chief, commissions him to investigate, Falco is forced to accept. Lindsey Davis' twelfth novel wittily explores Roman publishing and banking, taking us from the jealousies of authorship and the mire of patronage, to the darker financial world, where default can have fatal consequences . . . Praise for Lindsey Davis 'Lindsey Davis has seen off all her competitors to become the unassailable market leader in the 'crime in Ancient Rome' genre . . . Davis's squalid, vibrant Rome is as pleasurable as ever' - Guardian 'Davis's prose is a lively joy . . . sinister and gloriously real' - The Times on Sunday 'For fans of crime fiction set in the ancient world, this one is not to be missed' - Booklist 'Davis's books crackle with wit and knowledge . . . She has the happy knack of making the reader feel entirely immersed in Rome' - The Times

Saturnalia

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312945954
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
It’s 76 A.D. during the reign of Vespasian and the Roman festival of Saturnalia is getting underway. The days are short; the nights are for wild parties. But not for “informer” Marcus Didius Falco. His job is to uncover unwelcome truths and deal with sensitive situations, frequently at the behest of the imperial government. So when a general’s famous female conquest escapes from house arrest—leaving a horrendous murder in her wake—Falco is on the case. If finding a fugitive isn’t enough of a Zeus-like headache, Falco’s wife Helena Justina’s brother has also gone missing. Against the riotous backdrop of the season of misrule and merriment, the search seems impossible. And Falco seems to be the only one who notices that some dark agency is bringing death to the city streets…

Falco: The Official Companion

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446455238
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
One of the stories from the bestselling historical fiction Falco series. As the girl came running up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes...So, in 1989, readers were introduced to Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman informer, as he stood on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, looking out across the Forum: the heart of his world. Twenty years and twenty books later, Falco fans want a companion volume. Only here will you learn the author's private background, including her descent from a failed assassin and how atheism improved her knitting. Here too are the real glories and heartache involved in research and creation: why the baby had to be born in Barcelona, which plots evolved from intense loathing of management trainees, what part a thermal vest played in the iconic Falco's conception. It can't be a complete handbook to ancient Rome, but it covers perennial issues. There are a hundred illustrations, some specially commissioned, others from family archives. Enlightening quotations come from the Falco books and from eminent sources: Juvenal, through Chandler, to 1066 and All That. Readers have asked for this book. Their paranoid, secretive author agrees it is now or never. Time to spill beans on the travertine...

The Grove of the Caesars

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 125024157X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
In the sacred grove of Julius Caesar, something deadly stirs in the undergrowth—a serial killer, who haunted the gardens for years, has claimed another victim—in Lindsey Davis’s next historical mystery, The Grove of the Caesars. At the feet of her adoptive father, renowned private informer Marcus Didius Falco, Flavia Albia learned a number of important rules. First and foremost—always keep one's distance from the palace, nothing good comes from that direction. But right behind it—murder is the business of the Vigiles, best to leave them to it. Having broken the first rule more often than she'd like, it's no surprise to anyone when she finds herself breaking the second one. The public gardens named after the Caesars is a place nice girls are warned away from and when a series of bodies are uncovered, it seems that a serial killer has been haunting the grove for years. The case is assigned to one Julius Karus, a cohort of the Vigiles, but Albia is convinced that nothing will come of his efforts. Out of sympathy for the dead women and their grieving relatives, Albia decides to work with the vile Karus and bring the serial killer to justice.

Fatal Legacy

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 1529354757
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
An unpaid bar bill leads Flavia Albia to her most bitter and complex case yet. Decades earlier Appius Tranquillus Surus wrote his will: it freed his slaves and bequeathed his businesses to them. He left an orchard to the Prisci, a family he was friendly with, on the condition that his freedmen could still take its harvest. The convoluted arrangement has led to a feud between the two families, each of which has its own internal strife. Endless claims and counterclaims lead to violence and even death. Lawyers have given up in exasperation as the case limps on. The original will has disappeared, along with a falsified codicil - and might there be another one? But is there a solution? Two youngsters from each side of the divide, Gaius Venuleius and Cosca Sabatina, have fallen in love, which could unite the feuding families. There is only one problem: were Sabatina's grandmother and father really liberated in the Surus will? If not, the stigma of slavery will stop the marriage and the dispute will rage on forever. Reconciliation seems impossible, but Albia will try. Her investigation must cut through decades of secrets, arguments, lies and violence to reach a startling truth. Praise for Lindsey Davis and the Flavia Albia series 'It positively crackles with knowledge of the city and its people, mixed with social comment, ingenious and bloody plots and sharp observational skills leavened by more than a smattering of genuine and sometimes earthy humour' Crime Review 'Fiendishly twisted mystery' Mail on Sunday 'Great fun, shot through with sharp observations' SHOTS 'In this witty novel by the mistress of Roman crime, the reader is transported behind the scenes of a Triumph into a fascinating world of actors, costumiers and animal trainers, all united in their hatred of the murdered man' Sunday Express Magazine

Mystery Women, Volume Two (Revised)

Author: Colleen Barnett
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1615950095
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Book Description
Many bibliographers focus on women who write. Lawyer Barnett looks at women who detect, at women as sleuths and at the evolving roles of women in professions and in society. Excellent for all women's studies programs as well as for the mystery hound. Look at the popularity of such reading guides as Willetta Heising's Detecting Women (3rd ed. 0-9644593-7-X) or Amanda Cross' fiction (Honest Doubt 0-345-44011-0 11/00).

A Cruel Fate

Author: Lindsey Davis
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 1444763180
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 83

Book Description
Martin Watts, a bookseller, is captured by Royalists. Jane Afton's brother Nat is taken too. They suffer inhumane treatment as prisoners-of-war. In Oxford Castle jailor William Smith tortures, beats, starves and deprives his helpless victims. Can Jane rescue her sick brother before he dies of neglect? Will Martin dare to escape? Based on real events in the English Civil War, Lindsey Davis retells the grim tale of Captain Smith's abuse of power in Oxford prison - where many died in misery though a lucky few survived.

Classical Reception and Children's Literature

Author: Owen Hodkinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786723298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

Book Description
Reception studies have transformed the classics. Many more literary and cultural texts are now regarded as 'valid' for classical study. And within this process of widening, children's literature has in its turn emerged as being increasingly important. Books written for children now comprise one of the largest and most prominent bodies of texts to engage with the classical world, with an audience that constantly changes as it grows up. This innovative volume wrestles with that very characteristic of change which is so fundamental to children's literature, showing how significant the classics, as well as classically-inspired fiction and verse, have been in tackling the adolescent challenges posed by metamorphosis. Chapters address such themes as the use made by C S Lewis, in The Horse and his Boy, of Apuleius' The Golden Ass; how Ovidian myth frames the Narnia stories; classical 'nonsense' in Edward Lear; Pan as a powerful symbol of change in children's literature, for instance in The Wind in the Willows; the transformative power of the Orpheus myth; and how works for children have handled the teaching of the classics.