Russell Whitfield – författare

From seven bestselling authors, including New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn, comes a gripping and vividly imagined novel following an epic struggle of rebellion against the might of Rome.Britannia: land of mist and magic clinging to the western edge of the Roman Empire. A red-haired queen named Boudica led her people in a desperate rebellion against the might of Rome, an epic struggle destined to consume heroes and cowards, young and old, Roman and Briton . . . and these are their stories.A calculating queen foresees the fires of rebellion in a king’s death.A neglected slave girl seizes her own courage as Boudica calls for war.An idealistic tribune finds manhood in a brutal baptism of blood and slaughter.A death-haunted Druid challenges the gods themselves to ensure victory for his people.A conflicted young warrior finds himself torn between loyalties to tribe and to Rome.An old champion struggles for everlasting glory in the final battle against the legions.A pair of fiery princesses fight to salvage the pieces of their mother’s dream as the ravens circle.A novel in seven parts, overlapping stories of warriors and peacemakers, queens and slaves, Romans and Britons who cross paths during Boudica’s epic rebellion. But who will survive to see the dawn of a new Britannia, and who will fall to feed the ravens?

From seven masters of historical fiction—including New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn—comes a richly imagined anthology of stories which bring the epic tale of the Trojan War to life.Troy: city of gold, gatekeeper of the East, haven of the god-born and the lucky, a city destined to last a thousand years. But the Fates have other plans—the Fates, and a woman named Helen. In the shadow of Troy’s gates, all must be reborn in the greatest war of the ancient world: slaves and queens, heroes and cowards, seers and kings . . . and these are their stories.A young princess and an embittered prince join forces to prevent a fatal elopement.A tormented seeress challenges the gods themselves to save her city from the impending disaster.A tragedy-haunted king battles private demons and envious rivals as the siege grinds on.A doomed hero launches a desperate plan to bring the war to a close. A grizzled archer and a desperate Amazon risk their lives to avenge their dead.A trickster conceives the greatest trick of all.A goddess’s son battles to save the spirit of Troy even as the walls are breached in fire and blood.Seven authors vividly recreate the Trojan War: its heroes, its villains, its survivors, its dead. Who will lie forgotten in the embers, and who will rise to shape the bloody dawn of a new age?

Under the Flavian Emperors the Roman public's hunger for gladiatorial combat has never been greater. The Emperor Domitian's passion for novelty and variety in the arena has given rise to a very different kind of warrior: the Gladiatrix. Lysandra, member of an ancient Spartan sect of warrior priestesses, is the sole survivor of a shipwreck off the coast of Asia Minor who finds herself the property of Lucius Balbus owner of the foremost Ludus for female gladiators in the Eastern Empire. Lysandra's Spartan pride refuses to accept her new status as a slave. Her deadly combat skills not only enable her to survive but win the adoration of the crowds, the respect of her Lanista, Balbus, and the admiration of Sextus Julius Frontinus, the provincial governor. But Lysandra's hubris has stirred up the ethnic factions of the ludus attracting the enmity of the Dacian warrior, Sorina, Gladiatrix Prima and leader of the Barbarian faction as well as inciting the hatred of the sadistic Numidian trainer Nastasen. Meanwhile Frontinus and Balbus plan the ultimate combat spectacle for the visit of the emperor's emissary, Trajanus, that will involve Lysandra in her greatest and deadliest trial.

Four years have passed since Lysandra's epic but inconclusive battle with her hated rival Sorena in the arena of Halicarnassus and after which both combatants were granted their freedom by the ambitious consul, Trajanus. Now Sorena has found refuge among the Dacian hordes of Decebalus where she leads a vicious troop of horsewomen. Into her hands falls the young tribune Gaius Minervius Valerian and she ponders whether to deal him a slow and painful death or release him to journey back to Rome in shame and ignominy as the sole survivor of the empire's most humiliating defeat for half a millennium. Meanwhile, back in Halicarnassus, Lysandra has become accustomed to easy living and suffered a creeping and insidious addiction to alcohol that, together with her unabated hubris, is sapping both her self esteem and the friendship of those she loves most. But now the Emperor Domitian has called for a command performance at Rome's newly built Flavian Amphitheatre known to history as the Coliseum. Lysandra is invited to fight Rome's adored Gladiatrix Prima, the beautiful and deadly Illeana known as Aesalon Nocturna, the Midnight Falcon.Her record is devastating: thirty bouts; thirty wins- no draws or losses. Lysandra has to face up to all that she is and all that she must become as all roads lead to Rome.