Edward Marston

When seventeen-year-old Bertha is found in a holly patch, dead from a snakebite, her premature death shocks and distresses the entire town of Canterbury.

One island of wealth and luxury remains in the war-torn lands of Yorkshire, the castle of merchant Aubrey Maminot which holds two great terrors: the rogue Olaf Evil Child, a hero of the poor and conquered Saxon people, and the ravenous lions Maminot keeps as pets.

Volume seven of Edward Marston's Domesday series provides plenty of conflict between church and state, earl and king, Norman and Saxon, English and Welsh.

Three powerful Norman lords and a dispossessed Saxon thegn watch their steeds race close to the forest of Woodstock, each lusting for a win. But the first horse past the post has an empty saddle and his rider is lying in a copse with a knife in his back

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of its monks. The Abbot, ill-equipped to deal with such a heinous crime, is stunned by the Sheriff's belief that one of the monks is guilty.

The murder of a wealthy miller beckons two of King William the Conqueror's cleverest men to the town of Bedwyn to uncover dark secrets and find a two-legged killer more savage than any beast.