Set in the cities of Carcassonne, Toulouse and Paris, the story follows the life of fractured child, Hugo, as he becomes a man; his psyche twisted by events over which he has little control.

In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians whose beliefs threatened the authority of the Catholic Church. But decades of harrowing repression-enforced by the ruthless Pope Boniface VIII , the Machiavellian French King Philip the Fair of France, and the pitiless grand inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui (the villain in The Name of the Rose)-had bred resentment. In the city of Carcassonne, anger at the abuses of the Inquisition reached a boiling point and a great orator and fearless rebel emerged to unite the resistance among Cathar and Catholic alike. The people rose up, led by the charismatic Franciscan friar Bernard Délicieux and for a time reclaimed control of their lives and communities. Having written the acclaimed chronicle of the Cathars The Perfect Heresy , Stephen O'Shea returns to the medieval world to chronicle a rare and remarkable story of personal courage and principle standing up to power, amidst the last vestiges of the endlessly fascinating Cathar world. Praise for The Perfect Heresy : "At once a cautionary tale about the corruption of temporal power...and an accounting of the power of faith ...It is also just a darn good read."-Baltimore Sun "An accessible, readable history with lessons ...that were not learned by broad humanity until it saw 20th-century tyrants applying the goals and methods of the Inquisition on a universal scale."-New York Times

The hilarious and true story of two senior-citizens and their whippet dog who hatch, plan and carry out a “lunatic scheme” to sail from Stone in Staffordshire to Carcassonne in the South of France.

Note from the author - PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK YET, IT IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS. PLEASE GIVE US A FEW WEEKS.STEVE

'Brilliantly evoked' SUNDAY TIMES Discover the first medieval adventure in the action-packed Chivalry series! Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow and Conn Iggulden. September, 1356. Poitiers. The greatest knights of the age were ready to give battle. On the English side, Edward, the Black Prince, who'd earned his spurs at Crecy. On the French side, the King and his son, the Dauphin. With 12,000 knights. And then there is William Gold. A cook's boy - the lowest of the low - who had once been branded as a thief. William dreams of being a knight, but in this savage new world of intrigue, betrayal and greed, first he must learn to survive. As rapacious English mercenaries plunder a country already ravaged by plague, and the peasantry take violent revenge against the French knights who have failed to protect them, is chivalry any more than a boyish fantasy? 'A sword-slash above the rest' IRISH EXAMINER 'One of the finest writers of historical fiction in the world' BEN KANE

Berlin, 1939. An American tourist walks into the bar of the Adlon Hotel and offers, while under the influence, to bet that Germany and Russia will make common cause against Poland in the near future. The locals don’t buy such an outlandish prediction and eagerly accept his wager. Later that evening, the news comes over the radio that Germany and the USSR have just signed a nonaggression pact. Six years later, Professor Harry Gordon is still gambling, winning a quarter of a million dollars on a long shot at Belmont Park in New York and making steady profits on the stock market as well. He also seems to have acquired even more dangerous hobbies. When a prominent scientist goes missing in Mexico during a riot, he is eating at a restaurant down the street. When important documents disappear from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he is busy sending off tightly-packed envelopes to foreign embassies. When the CIA brings counterrevolution to Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, he happens to be watching from a nearby hill. As it turns out, the Professor is not content merely to observe events as historians usually do. He wants to play a role in manipulating them. Aided and abetted by an American draft dodger, an Australian pilot, and a former Soviet spy, the Professor works by devious routes to hammer into the public imagination the idea that there is a worse threat to the American way of life than mere Communism. And then, in the background, he quietly goes about increasing that threat by every means in his power. By 1968, France, Israel and Iran are forming a nuclear triumvirate that dominates the Mediterranean world. The United States is refocusing its foreign policy on a revival of the Monroe Doctrine. Southern Asia and China are balancing on the verge of the worst famine in centuries. Africa is in flames from Alexandria to Cape Town. The Soviet Union is depending on American resources in order to survive, and vice versa. In these circumstances, the Professor’s efforts to carve out an improved future for humanity appear to have failed. Any effect they may have had on history will be lost in the spreading patterns of conflict that are busy plunging nation after nation into internal strife. Or will it?

When Richard Halliburton graduated from college, he chose adventure over a career, traveling the world with almost no money. The Royal Road to Romance chronicles what happened as a result, from a breakthrough Matterhorn ascent to being jailed for taking forbidden pictures on Gibraltar. Halliburton's literary career developed out of his meticulous logging of events that occurred on his own adventures. This book, his first, an account of his travels in 1921-23, was a best-seller for three years and was translated into 15 languages.