‘A brilliant storyteller, The Lymond Chronicles will keep you reading late into the night’ The Times Literary Supplement
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‘I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands’

1547. After five years imprisonment and exile far from his homeland, Francis Crawford of Lymond – scholar, soldier, rebel, nobleman, outlaw – returns to Edinburgh.

But for many in an already divided Scotland, where conspiracies swarm around the infant Queen Mary, 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 to foment rebellion?
Does he seek revenge on those who banished him?
Or has he returned to clear his name?

No one but the enigmatic Lymond himself knows the truth – and no one will discover it until he is ready . . .
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‘A storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about pace, suspense and imaginative invention’ New York Times

‘Melodrama of the most magnificent kind’ Guardian

VOTED ONE OF BRITAIN’S FAVOURITE HISTORICAL NOVELS

‘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

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‘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 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

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‘Catherine de Charetty, having chosen a lover just after the Feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, was much put out to learn that, at nearly thirteen, she did not possess all the required qualifications . . .’

Yet her secret suitor, Pagano Doria, claims he will wait and spirits her away from Bruges, first to Florence and then eastwards. On their trail is Nicholas vander Poele, her step-father, conducting his own journey to the fabled city of Trebizond, a Byzantine outpost on the Black Sea.

Known as the treasure-house of the East, Trebizond in 1461 is the ideal location for Nicholas to open the House of Niccolo’s new trading post. However, the city’s riches are threated by a Turkish army while rival merchant families seek to thwart Nicholas’ ambitions.

Not least among them is Doria himself, harbouring a plan involving young Catherine to rain ruin on the head of House Niccolo. . .

‘A sorceress of the genre’ Daily Mail

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‘It began with sea, and September sunlight, and three young men lying stripped to their doublets in the Duke of Burgundy’s bath . . .’

Meet Caes – Nicholas vander Poele – an eighteen-year-old orphan and dyer apprentice’s working for the widow Marian de Charetty in Bruges. After fetching up in jail for accidentally sinking a lighter and breaking the leg of a nobleman, his young life seems over before it is even begun.

However, fate and the fifteenth century have great expectations for Nicholas and he soon finds himself leading the Charetty company into adventures and intrigues both mercantile and military, even as enemies plot their downfall.

Through cunning, bravery, wit and an unexpected wisdom, Nicholas begins to lay the foundations for the House of Niccolo . . .

‘As brilliant and interesting as Lymond. A generous feast’ Daily Telegraph

‘A series that will give us our fill of high Renaissance adventure and espionage’ Guardian