The Name of the Rose

This novel by the author of The Name of the Rose follows that book's format of a complex intellectual thriller. The plot ranges back and forth through the centuries, full of arcane knowledge, secret societies, love, death, passion and perversion.

Yambo struggles through the frames to find at last the face of the girl he loves.

In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death ravages their city, ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside. They amuse themselves by each telling a story for the ten days they are destined to remain there - a hundred stories of love, adventure and surprising twists of fate.

Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, 'Purgatory' relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory - a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into the depths of the earth.

It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own story.

Filled with sex and violence - in and out of time and space - the three books in this trilogy are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle the cover-ups of our time - from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill - and suggest a mind-blowing truth.

Defines the essential virtues for those at Court. This title includes a series of imaginary conversations between the real-life courtiers to the Duke of Urbino, in which his speakers discuss qualities of noble behaviour - chiefly discretion and gracefulness - as well as questions such as the duties of a good government and the true nature of love.