Pawn in Frankincense (96 page)

‘It is well,’ said Kiaya Khátún. ‘You are here; and we have begun on our journey together.’

“The finest living writer of historical fiction.”
—Washington Post Book World

THE GAME OF KINGS

Dorothy Dunnett introduces her irresistible hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman of elastic morals and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

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QUEENS’ PLAY

Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

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THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.

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PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE

Lymond cuts a desperate path across the Ottoman empire of Suleiman the Magnificent in search of a kidnapped child, an effort that may place this adventurer in the power of his enemies. What ensues is a subtle and savage chess game whose gambits include treachery, enslavement, and torture and whose final move compels Lymond to face the darkest ambiguities of his own nature.

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THE RINGED CASTLE

Between Mary Tudor’s England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible lies a vast distance indeed, but forces within the Tudor court impel Lymond to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. In this barbaric land, Lymond finds his gifts for intrigue and survival tested to the breaking point, yet these dangers are nothing beside those of England, where Lymond’s oldest enemies are conspiring against him.

Fiction/0-679-77747-4/Available in September 1997

CHECKMATE

Francis Crawford returns to France to lead an army against England. But even as the soldier scholar succeeds brilliantly on the battlefield, his haunted past becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond’s parentage possesses the power to control him—or destroy him.

Fiction/0-679-77748-2/Available in September 1997

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