'I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands' It is 1547 and, after five years imprisonment and exile far from his homeland, Francis Crawford of Lymond - scholar, soldier, rebel, nobleman, outlaw - has at last come back to Edinburgh. But for many in an already divided Scotland, where conspiracies swarm around the infant Queen Mary like clouds of midges, he is not welcome. Lymond is wanted for treason and murder, and he is accompanied by a band of killers and ruffians who will only bring further violence and strife. Is he back...

The third book in the Lymond Chronicles, set in Malta in 1551. The soldier Lymond is precipitated into an intricate and potentially lethal duel with a man known as Gabriel. He holds in his sway the minds of many men, as does the dangerous and beautiful child-woman, his sister.

Part of the Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett's series of six novels, this text explores the intricacies of 16th-century history through the exploits of the soldier Francis Crawford of Lymond.

Part of Dorothy Dunnett's series that explores the intricacies of 16th-century history through the exploits of the soldier Francis Crawford of Lymond.

In 1461, the mysterious enigmatic Nicholas is in Florence. Backed by none other than Cosimo de' Medici, he will sail the Black Sea to Trebizond, last outpost of Byzantium, and the last jewel missing from the crown of the Ottoman Empire. But trouble lies ahead. Nicholas's step-daughter - at the tender age of thirteen - has eloped with his rival in trade: a Machiavellian Genoese who races ahead of Nicholas, sowing disaster at every port. And time is of the essence: Trebizond may fall tot he Turks at any moment. Crackling with wit, breathtakingly paced, THE SPRING OF THE RAM is a pyro technic...

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, the good-natured dyers apprentice who schemes and swashbucukes his way to thehelm of a merchantile empire. NICCOLO RISING, Book One of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. 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 abreathless adventure that wins him the love of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two...

The fifth volume in the series following the exploits of 16th-century soldier of fortune Francis Crawford of Lymond. From the silken palace of Suleiman the Magnificent to the barbaric court of Ivan the Terrible, Lymond is bound for Russia, where he fights his way to a position second only to Tsar.

'The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own' It is 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...