You are the high spirited 19-year-old daughter of a penniless widow, born and brought up on an isolated, windswept South Atlantic island, a girl with virtually no prospects, when out of the blue the most famous man on earth falls into your lap. Still smarting from his defeat at Waterloo, still the hero of Liberals everywhere, Napoleon has been exiled to tiny Saint Helena because it is the remotest and most easily defended island in the British Empire. But far from being broken by defeat, Napoleon's fertile imagination seethes with escape schemes. He meets you on his first evening on the...

It is a time when Rome rules the world and astrologers rule Rome with their eerie doctrine that is part astronomy, part superstition and all powerful. It is 48 AD and the Romans are searching the Museum of Alexandria for a sixteen-year-old who, according to court astrologers, is destined to play a fateful role in the future of the empire. Tigellinus, handsome and ruthless, discovers Epaphroditus, a library slave who was born at the fated time and sends him to Rome to become the young Nero's personal assistant. There Epaphroditus battles court intrigues and struggles with the question whether...