The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. The body of one monk is found in a cask of pigs' blood, another is floating in a bathhouse, still another is crushed at the foot of a cliff.

The gentle son of a medieval German robber baron, raised in the calm and thoughtful quiet of a monastery, returns to his father's castle and, despite great suffering and blood-feuds, grows to honor and manhood.

A fascinating look at life in the Middle Ages that focuses on eight extraordinary medieval men and women through realistically invented conversations between them and their counterparts.

A translation of the fourteenth-century tales recounted by young citizens of Florence who have fled the city to escape the plague.

"A revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge, and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later"-- "The digital era is beset by distraction: we fantasize about escaping our screen, and recapturing a world with less noise. Kreiner demonstrates that the attempts of monks to contemplate the divine order and its ethical requirements were all-consuming, and their battles...

International bestselling author Ken Follett has enthralled millions of readers with The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, two stories of the Middle Ages set in the fictional city of Kingsbridge. The saga now continues with Follett's magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire. In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and...

"A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages: Hild Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods' priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is the king's youngest...

"Recognizing that the Christian crusades unfolded in a world shaped by Islamic jihads, Lambert scrutinizes both militant forms of religion simultaneously. In a world where memories of crusader atrocities sustain virulent new forms of jihad, such balanced scholarship offers hope of interfaith understanding."--Booklist. "Crusade and jihad are often reckoned to have represented two sides of the same coin: each resonated on the opposing sides in the...

"We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home. In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood, and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret, one that imperils...

Find out all about the history of the Vikings, the warriors and explorers who raided Europe in their longships throughout the Middle Ages. Learn about Viking warfare, their families, homes, clothes, and crafts, as well as gods from Norse mythology, such as Thor and Loki, in this beautifully illustrated children's book that is crammed with amazing facts. Amazing cut-away artworks take you inside Viking homes and longships, in which these notorious...