Lovingly crafted by a Saxon swordsmith shortly before the Norman invasion, treachery and deceit are the Sword of Shame’s constant companions. From the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the murder of Thomas a Becket, from an attempted coup against Richard the L
It was July, 1100. Jerusalem lies ransacked. Amidst the chaos, an English knight is entrusted with a valuable religious relic: a fragment of the True Cross, allegedly stained with the blood of Christ. The relic is said to be cursed: anyone who touches it
575 AD: A baby is washed up on the Irish coast and is taken to the nearest abbey. He grows up to become a scholar and a monk, but, in early adulthood, he appears to have become possessed, scribbling endless strange verses in Latin. When the Abbott tries t
1067. A group of hunters discover a meteor which has fallen from the sky. Over the next 600 years, the Sky-Stone falls into the hands of crusading knights, the wicked Sheriff of Devon, a group group of radical young kabalists, the dying King Henry III and
Bath Abbey, 1199. The monks' peaceful existence is turned upside down when the Abbey's unpopular prior is found dead on Solsbury Hill. But when Sir Symon Cole and his wife, Gwenllian, arrive to investigate, they soon discover hear whisperings that prior h
Bermondsey Priory, 1114: A young chaplain succumbs to the temptations of the flesh and suffers a gruesome punishment. From that moment the monastery is cursed and over the next 500 years, murder and treachery abound inside its hallowed walls. A beautiful
Oxford University, in 1264, the savage murder of a young girl kindles a frenzy of suspicion between privileged students and impoverished townspeople. And when one of Falconer's students who may have witnessed the crime narrowly escapes being beaten to dea
Our dark past brought to life by leading contemporary crime writers. A new generation of crime writers has broadened the genre of crime fiction, creating more human stories of historical realism, with a stronger emphasis on character and the psychology of
