Medieval English

John Gaunt was the son of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV, and the sire of all those Tudors. He has had pretty bad press: supposed usurper of Richard II’s crown and the focus of hatred in the Peasants’ Revolt, as they torched his home, the Savoy Palace. Helen Carr paints a complex portrait of a man who held the levers of power on the English and European stage, passionately upheld chivalric values, pressed for the Bible to be translated into English, and patronized the arts.

King Henry's blue-eyed champion has been sent to quell a nation's rebellion. He vows to seal their peace by wedding Gilbert de Lontaine's beautiful daughter, but although the girl with smoky eyes holds his heart in peril, the real danger lurks in unexpected quarters. Can true love bind two hearts and bring the Wolf's bride home?

To get a fresh start away from a bad relationship, Kylie Strange moves across the country to open a shop in a seemingly quiet town in rural Maine. During renovations on Strange Herbs & Teas, she discovers a peculiar and ancient codex, The Booke of the Hidden, bricked into the wall. Every small town has its legends and unusual histories, and this artifact sends Kylie right into the center of Moody Bog's biggest secret.

November 1146. Gwynedd is at war with Ranulf, Earl of Chester, who seeks to gain a foothold in Wales against the day peace finally comes to England. On the eve of King Owain's counter-assault on Mold Castle, the body of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Gwen is discovered buried in someone else's grave. Even in the midst of war, murder must be investigated, and it falls to Gareth and Gwen to bring the guilty to justice.

About empty thrones, a lot can be said. Throughout history, both ancient and near modern, a lack of an heir and the sudden death of a beloved monarch always meant trouble. When the position of a king is up for grabs, a lot of eager hands come forward. Pretenders and would-be heirs, cousins and nephews, bastard sons and daughters - they all came forward staking their claim to the throne. In the history of Medieval England, such episodes were many.

Here are the great stories of the Heroic Age, from the myths of the making of the universe to the death of Heracles. Set against the colorful background of Greece and the Aegean, the adventures of heroes such as Perseus the Gorgon-slayer, Dionysus, Theseus, and Jason and the Argonauts once again come to life.

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history.

1231 A.D. After a nasty skirmish along the England/Scotland border at Bog Wood, a badly wounded knight has crawled off to die. As women from the Clan Scott fan out across the battlefield to collect the spoils of war, one woman breaks off from the pack. She is sickened by the tradition of stealing valuables off the dead and runs off to hide. In her hiding place, however, lingers the badly wounded knight. The young woman is frightened at first but her natural instinct to lend aid takes over. She tends the knight and saves his life.

Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. Author Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions much of conventional wisdom, and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, philosophy emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline.

The crow hissed: "Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut your throat here and now. One single damn reason." The prince froze with fear and said nothing. At last, his behavior was logical. His facial features had lost any order. Shivering, he closed his eyes in expectation of certain death. But then there was a whispering. "Could there be three reasons maybe?" She suppressed the reflex to laugh—she hadn’t laughed aloud for years and was not sure if the muscles needed were even still functioning.

Join Godfrid the Dane for murder and mayhem in medieval Dublin! Godfrid the Dane makes his first appearance in the Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mysteries in the first book, The Good Knight. He comes to Anglesey at the behest of the treacherous Prince Cadwaladr, but quickly realizes the deal he’s made is not quite what he thought, and Cadwaladr is not worthy of his allegiance. He takes it upon himself to learn the truth about what is going on in Wales and in the process encounters a young Welsh woman, Gwen, and her fiancé, Gareth, who comes to Ireland in search of her.

Ryokan (1758–1831) is, along with Dogen and Hakuin, one of the three giants of Zen in Japan. But unlike his two renowned colleagues, Ryokan was a societal dropout, living mostly as a hermit and a beggar. He was never head of a monastery or temple. He liked playing with children. He had no dharma heir. Even so, people recognized the depth of his realization, and he was sought out by people of all walks of life for the teaching to be experienced in just being around him.

Davina Montgomery is no ordinary English lady. For her own protection, she’s been locked away from society, her true identity the Crown’s most closely guarded secret. Until a shocking betrayal—and a bold rescue—land her in the arms of a fierce Highlander, a powerful warrior whose searing gaze and tantalizing touch awaken her body and soul.

In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and was never resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical-physicist girlfriend, Sharon, become interested. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn't. Why? What was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago?

April 1294. With David returned from Ireland and Anna from Avalon, the time has come to confront the traitors who sought to assassinate David and take his throne. But before that can happen, David is tested yet again by his inability to account for everything or everyone in his life - and especially the magic that surrounds him.

AD 1192 - Sir Christopher de Lohr is Richard the Lion Heart's champion, a man the Muslims nicknamed "The Lion's Claw". Blond, battle scarred, and powerful, he is what all men fear. After the fall of Acre, Christopher makes a promise at the deathbed of a dying comrade to marry the man's incorrigible but wealthy daughter. Christopher returns home to marry the woman, but the only thing he is interested in is her substantial dowry. He has no use for a wife and resents being forced into the marriage.

Time travel to medieval Wales! Enter a land of princes and castles as Anna is catapulted through time in the first two books in the After Cilmeri series ...

Truth. Justice. Revenge. Behind these stands The Scotsman's Sword. When Lor Careston's quiet Highland village was attacked and burned, he felt helpless against the raiders who destroyed his home. Seeking revenge, but lacking the fighting skills he needs to execute his mission, he sets out to find the Ludus Caledonia - a mysterious fight guild that turns men into warriors. Lor trains hard, proves himself in the ring, and earns a place with the very clan that decimated his home, having decided to set his plan for revenge in motion from inside the clan.

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.

Historians have only recently awakened to the importance of the family, the basic social unit throughout human history. This book traces the development of marriage and the family from the Middle Ages to the early modern era. It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian church to forge new concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century, it follows the development—sometimes gradual, at other times revolutionary—of significant elements in the history of the family.