Voices of Rome

Lindsey Davis has received the Crime Writer's Association Lifetime Achievement Award for her two immortal series of detective novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco and his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. She is regarded as the finest living novelist of Ancient Rome. Here, for the first time in book form, are four novella-length stories written to illuminate her unparalleled output of the last 30 years.

The Bride from Bithynia tells the story of Aelia Camilla who travels 1000 miles to Britain to marry Gaius Flavius, a Roman officer. But their relationship struggles, then the province explodes in the Boudican Revolt. Now, it will be up to Aelia to save herself from the conflagration.

The Spook Who Spoke Again. Marcus Didius Alexander Postumus is an odd boy who has known two families. That of Marcus Didius himself and his actual birth mother, Thalia the Snake Dancer. Things begin to unravel quickly when he decides to emulate his adopted father and investigate a death in Thalia's troupe of exotic performers.

Vesuvius by Night. Two men share a room but seldom meet. Nonius is a pimp and part time thief who operates at night, Larius is a fresco painter who dreams of artistic greatness by day. When the volcano erupts, one will begin looting hastily abandoned villas, the other will do anything he can to save himself and his family.

Invitation to Die. When the Emperor Domitian invites the entire senatorial class to a banquet to honour the recent war dead, many think he intends to take revenge on his enemies. When the Camillus brothers enter the black-painted hall where the feast is being held and see their names engraved on monumental stones, they fear they will not survive the night...

Four pivotal events, fact and fiction. Four stories which allow Davis's much-loved characters new space and the opportunity to take personal roles in tense situations, with moving results. They face villainy, tragedy, accident, confusion and fear - but each story is told with the wry humour, and underpinned by human wisdom, courage and love.

Lindsey Davis has been a historical novelist for thirty-five years. She began writing about the Romans with The Course of Honour. the real life love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. She is best known for her twenty-book adventure series about Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina. Master and God, about the paranoid tyrant Domitian, led to a second Roman detective series, featuring Flavia Albia, also set in that dark period.

Her books are translated into many languages and have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4.

She has been Honorary President of the UK Classical Association, Chair of the UK Crimewriter's Association, Chair of the UK Society of Authors and president of the Birmingham and Midlands Institute.

Her awards include the Premio Colosseo (from the city of Rome) and the Crime Writers' Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement and, in 2023, the Ivanhoe award at the Historical Novel Festival in Ubeda, Spain.

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