MatrixSeventeen year old Marie, too wild for courtly life, is thrown to the dogs one winter morning, expelled from the royal court to become the prioress of an abbey. Marie is strange tall, a giantess, her elbows and knees stick out, ungainly. At first taken aback by life at the abbey, Marie finds purpose and passion among her mercurial sisters. Yet she deeply misses her secret lover Cecily and queen Eleanor. Born last in a long line of women warriors and

When all hope is lost

Sharpe confronts his enemies in a climactic battle

Along the way Blanco meets Eva

To save them

When the pesky Anna Bnz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing still practised there

"How can you lose money growing a crop everyone wants with labour that costs next to nothing

And a web of deceit is closing around her

who died mysteriously in the Himalayas when Flavia was a baby

her young brother Simon and their friend Charles Renislau

and outside a raging wind was buffeting the windows and howling down the chimney - not that it was the wind which had woken Tom

and Circe's independence draws the wrath of men and gods alike

those skeletons in their watery coffin