The Enterprise Of Death

Even disaster can yield riches for the right sort of criminal... The great flood killed thousands overnight - turning the towns between the warring cities of Dordrecht and Geertruidenburg into a desolate inland sea. Into this ruined land sail three uneasy conspirators: a ruthless conman, a thug at the edge of madness and a half-feral girl who swims like a fish. Working together they could find fortune beyond reckoning beneath the waves, but the lost souls below will not give up their treasures so easily. And even if these three can survive the dark waters, that's no guarantee they will survive each other.

Wiltshire, during the dying days of Oliver Cromwell's Republic. Robert Vaughan is the son of a Parliamentarian officer who is investigating a series of grisly murders which suggest a link with Satanic rituals at Stonehenge. The return of a notoriously wicked Cavalier, signalling the impending royalist restoration, leads to a terrible tragedy for the Vaughans. Robert's flight from his violent, terrifying past leads him to Restoration London, where he works as scribe for Milton, and where he survives the Plague and the Great Fire. But Robert is led along a dark path, to vampirism and beyond, as he devotes himself to gaining the powers that will enable him to fight an evil killer of seemingly satanic powers. He will travel the globe, from the ancient ghetto of Prague to the virgin forest of the New World, as he aims to gain revenge on those who betrayed him.

A sorcerer slaughters the King and his entire court in front of the disbelieving eyes of young Prince D'zan. From that moment, D'zan is driven by one thought - the need to regain his father's stolen throne. The lives of six foreign Princes are tied to D'zan's fate, as he seeks allies for his cause. In a land where Men and Giants battle side by side against ancient monsters and chilling sorcery, only one thing is certain - war is coming. Kingdoms will clash and blood will run. Seven Princes. Seven destinies. All will be legend.

A young man, driven by jealousy over love, tells a lie that accidentally results in the death of his older brother. Some time later, Hiro is kidnapped and confined to a room with eight other people, each wearing a grotesque animal mask. Their kidnapper informs them that their time has come to be judged for their "sins"-and that they will have to judge one another. Every twelve hours, the captives must choose who among them will die...and only four will remain alive when all is through...

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a mystic, philosopher and scientist whose ideas were decades ahead of their time. A proponent of a unificatory vision of science, he was both a champion of the occult as Newton would be after him, and a torch-bearer for the sort of holistic dreams that Leonardo had cherished before him. As such he is perfect material for the third in Michael White's loose trilogy of science biographies - after Newton, the last sorcerer, and Leonardo, the first scientist, we have Bruno, science's first martyr.THE POPE AND THE HERETIC re-creates not just the vibrancy of intellectual life at the height of the Renaissance but also the horrific cost of pursuing ideas which ran counter to the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. After almost eight years' imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Inquisition, Bruno was burned at the stake for his beliefs - or rather, his refusal to accept that intellectual investigation was limited by the dictats of Rome. His life and martyrdom are the subjects of this fascinating book.