David Wishart – författare

''It''s a funny thing about holidays in the country, but after only a few days away you feel as if you''ve been out of circulation for a month'' Marcus Corvinus'' break in the Alban Hills is interrupted by the sudden and messy death of a candidate for the local censorship post. Can Corvinus find his murderer before the Latin Festival raises its stakes? How do the Latin Nationalists fit into the picture? And what exactly is Meton the chef up to in the kitchen with Dassa the sheep? Corvinus doesn''t know the answers either.

The one ''fact'' that everyone knows about Emperor Nero is that he fiddled while Rome burned. But what elements of nature and nuture combined to make this notorious character? An entertaining view is presented by Titus Petronius, Nero''s pleasure-loving Advisor on Taste, through whose eyes we see the tumultuous, and ultimately tragic, life of the emperor.But is it a view we can trust? As their relationship develops, Petronius finds to his dismay that his personal sympathies lie more with the mad emperor than with the forces that seek to keep him in check. Caught between his own beliefs and the political realities of his time, he finds himself walking a path which will lead him and others inevitably to disaster.

Britain AD59: The scars of Roman conquest are still livid, the clash of two disparate cultures a source of bitterness and conflict. The Roman ruling class believe it is their duty to civilise the natives; the British tribes chafe under the conquerors'' yoke.Marcus Julius Severinus, a young cavalryman in the Roman army, respects the Britons among whom he has been brought up. Newly promoted to Commander of the ''Foxes'', he believes there is more to be gained by co-operation than by brute force. Governor Paullinus does not agree. When he attempts to cheat Boudica, queen of the Iceni, of her rightful inheritance, he underestimates the wave of rebellious fury that engulfs Roman and Briton alike. Even though the final battle is won, Marcus and his family have to pay a terrible price.Yet from the tragedy stems hope. Marcus''s marriage to the daughter of a British chieftain symbolises a new era in which the two races forge a common destiny.

It is the morning after the nocturnal rite of the good Goddess, an all-female ceremony strictly out of bounds to the male of the species, and the body of a young woman has been found, her throat cut. Suicide or murder?Hoping to avoid scandal, Senator Lucius Arruntius calls in Marcus Corvinus to do some discreet sleuthing. Marcus is helped in his investigations by a feisty flutegirl and by his clever, loyal wife Perilla (even though her attention is somewhat distracted by the acquisition of a revolutionary new clock). But - inevitably - to solve the mystery, Marcus must look beyond the obvious and first untangle a complex web of treachery and deceit.