Akron Public Library

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 Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love. Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the...

Enormously popular when published, Westward Ho! is the saga of Elizabethan sailors from the Devonshire coast who sail off into the unknown to found an empire for their queen. Moving at a breathless pace from start to finish, the story of the sailors' adventures and conflicts with the Spanish make it an exhilarating read.

Biographers often neglect the captive years of Mary, Queen of Scots, who trusted Queen Elizabeth's promise of sanctuary when she fled from rebels in Scotland and then found herself imprisoned as the guest of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his indomitable wife, Bess of Hardwick. The newly married couple welcome the doomed queen into their home, certain that serving as her hosts and jailers will bring them an advantage in the cutthroat world...

Karen Harper’s crowd-pleasing Elizabeth I Mystery series, hailed as “extraordinary” by the Los Angeles Times, continues with this marvelous, majestic novel. The Queene’s Cure transports us into the shadowy world of sixteenth-century medicine, as an enlightened young queen seeks the cures that could heal a realm and transform a land....
In late summer of 1562, within a bedchamber at Whitehall Palace,...

In 1599 England, twelve-year-old lying, thieving Will Sparrow runs away, meets many colorful characters on the road, and then reluctantly joins a traveling "oddities" exhibit, where he learns to see beyond appearances.

Upon the death of Mary I (Bloody Mary), Elizabeth I takes the throne and Brendan Prescott is called to aid the young queen amid a realm plunged into chaos and a court rife with conspiracy. London, 1558. Queen Mary is dead, and twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth ascends the throne. Summoned to court from exile abroad, Elizabeth's intimate spy, Brendan Prescott, is reunited with the young queen, as well as his beloved Kate, scheming William Cecil, and archrival,...

August, 1582. The queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, has ordered Ursula to keep an eye on her new neighbour, Giles Frost, who is rumoured to be spying for King Philip of Spain. Arriving at Knoll House on the pretext of teaching his two daughters embroidery, Ursula’s secret mission is to feed false information to Frost to pass on to the Spanish. Walsingham has assured Ursula that she’ll be in no danger. But events take a decidedly sinister...

"In Elizabeth I's England, a fourteen-year-old girl who steals a loaf of bread is sentenced to be a sin eater, a shunned woman who must assume the sins of the dead, and becomes drawn into a dangerous mystery at the heart of a corrupt and violent court. 'The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard / Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers / Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard / The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.' For the crime of stealing bread,...

A young orphan boy is ordered by his master to infiltrate Shakespeare's acting troupe in order to steal the script of "Hamlet," but he discovers instead the meaning of friendship and loyalty.

On May 30, 1593, London's most popular playwright was stabbed to death. The royal coroner ruled that Christopher Marlowe was killed in self-defense, but historians have long suspected otherwise, given his role as an "intelligencer" in the queen's secret service. In sixteenth-century London, Marlowe embarks on his final intelligence assignment, hoping to find his missing muse, as well as the culprits behind a high-stakes smuggling scheme. In present-day...