Set in Egypt, more than a thousand years before Christ, it encompasses all of the then-known world. It is told by Sinhue, physician to the Pharaoh Akhenaton, and is the story of his life. Through his eyes are seen innumerable characters, fully drawn and covering the whole panorama of the ancient world.

The French title of the novel emphasizes Notre Dame's (A French memorial) role as a symbol of Paris. Primarily novel is concerned with the theme of revolution and social strife. Hugo was profoundly concerned by the class differences that set the 1789 French Revolution in motion. Hugo acknowledges that fate plays a powerful role, but implies that free will is also possible.

Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre, Jacques Sauni're, has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history. Langdon suspects the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion - a centuries old secret society - and has sacrificed his life to protect the Priory's most sacred trust: the location of a vastly important religious relic hidden for centuries. But it now appears that Opus Dei, a clandestine sect that has long plotted to seize the Prirory's secret, has now made its move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, the Priory's secret - and a stunning historical truth - will be lost forever. Breaking the mould of traditional suspense novels, The DA VINCI CODE is simultaneously lightning-paced, intelligent and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail. And in this exclusive edition Dan Brown allows the reader behind the scenes of the novel which now incorporates over 150 photographs and illustrations throughout the text showing the rich historical tapestry from which he drew his inspiration. The visual sources which provide both the backdrop and the stimulus for the novel's action are revealed for the first time and uniquely complement the reading experience.

A tale inspired by their 1850 journey up the Nile imagines shared encounters between Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, during which they overcame considerable differences to forge a bond of intelligence, humor, and passion.

In this exciting--and unusual--mystery set in ancient Egypt, sudden death is waiting to strike someone in a landowner's large household.

From the bestselling author of Fatherland and Pompeii, comes the first novel of a trilogy about the struggle for power in ancient Rome. In his “most accomplished work to date” (Los Angeles Times), master of historical fiction Robert Harris lures readers back in time to the compelling life of Roman Senator Marcus Cicero. The re-creation of a vanished biography written by his household slave and righthand man, Tiro, Imperium follows Cicero’s extraordinary struggle to attain supreme power in Rome. On a cold November morning, Tiro opens the door to find a terrified, bedraggled stranger begging for help. Once a Sicilian aristocrat, the man was robbed by the corrupt Roman governor, Verres, who is now trying to convict him under false pretenses and sentence him to a violent death. The man claims that only the great senator Marcus Cicero, one of Rome’s most ambitious lawyers and spellbinding orators, can bring him justice in a crooked society manipulated by the villainous governor. But for Cicero, it is a chance to prove himself worthy of absolute power. What follows is one of the most gripping courtroom dramas in history, and the beginning of a quest for political glory by a man who fought his way to the top using only his voice—defeating the most daunting figures in Roman history.

The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel. Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her brother has a vision of their marriage bringing disaster to the family, Romola and Tito are soon wed. Two years later, Piero has been exiled for his cowardly surrender to French invaders, and the religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola has seized control. As Tito attempts to gain favor with the French, a shameful secret threatens to undermine him, and he will do anything to keep it hidden. When Tito’s duplicity in love and politics threatens to destroy everything Romola values, she must finally break free of his influence and find her own path in life. Both a grand historical saga and the story of a woman’s intellectual and spiritual awakening, Romola is one of author George Eliot’s most ambitious literary achievements. Eliot herself described it as “written with my best blood”.

#1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The “extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece” (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett’s already phenomenal career—and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended. “Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect—a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother. A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. “One hell of a good read.... As close as a book can come to a summertime cinematic blockbuster.” —USA Today “A diverting thriller.” —Entertainment Weekly With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee. Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri's The Inferno. Dan Brown has raised the bar yet again, combining classical Italian art, history, and literature with cutting-edge science in this captivating thriller.

The Silver Pigs is Lindsey Davis' classic novel, which introduced readers around the world to Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer with a knack for trouble, a tendency for bad luck, and a frequently inconvenient drive for justice. When Marcus Didius Falco, a Roman "informer" who has a nose for trouble that's sharper than most, encounters Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately all is not right with the pretty girl. She confesses to him that she is fleeing for her life, and Falco makes the rash decision to rescue her—a decision he will come to regret. For Sosia bears a heavy burden: as heavy as a pile of stolen Imperial ingots, in fact. Matters just get more complicated when Falco meets Helena Justina, a Senator's daughter who is connected to the very same traitors he has sworn to expose. Soon Falco finds himself swept from the perilous back alleys of Ancient Rome to the silver mines of distant Britain—and up against a cabal of traitors with blood on their hands and no compunction whatsoever to do away with a snooping plebe like Falco....