The Game of Kings

To critics, Dorothy Dunnett may be the world’s greatest living writer of historical fiction, inspiring comparisons with Mary Renault and Patrick O’Brian.

To her readers, she is nothing less than an addiction. But only now are the Lymond Chronicles, the enthralling series of novels with which Dunnett’s reputation began, available in this country in quality paperback editions.

In 1547 Scotland has been humiliated by an English invasion and is threatened by machinations elsewhere beyond its borders, but it is still free. Paradoxically, her freedom may depend on a man who stands accused of treason. He is Francis Crawford of Lymond, a scapegrace nobleman of crooked felicities and murderous talents, possessed of a scholar’s erudition and a tongue as wicked as a rapier. In The Game of Kings this extraordinary antihero returns to the country that has outlawed him to redeem his reputation even at the risk of his life.