For centuries the Alps have seen the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers and the dreams of engineers-and some 14 million people live among their peaks today. In The Alps, Stephen O’Shea takes readers up and down these majestic mountains, journeying through their 500-mile arc across France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. Along the way, he explores the reality behind Hannibal and his elephants’ famous crossing in 218 BCE; he reveals how the Alps have profoundly influenced culture from Frankenstein to Heidi to The Sound of Music; and he visits the spot where Arthur Conan Doyle staged Sherlock Holmes’s death scene, the bloody site of the Italians’ retreat in World War I, and Hitler’s notorious vacation house, the Eagle’s Nest. Throughout, O’Shea records his adventures with the watch makers, salt miners, cable-car operators, and yodelers who define the Alps today.

A breathtaking new, medieval thriller in the tradition of The Name of the Rose and Game of Thrones by acclaimed historian Stephen O’Shea.
The year is 1242. Dominican inquisitors are traveling in France, persecuting and torturing suspected heretics. But then someone starts killing the Inquisitors . . . and whoever it is must be stopped before the fanatical Dominicans wreak their brutal revenge, provoking the people to rise in revolt against the French Crown for allowing the bloodshed. So the Crown sends Balian of Mallorca, a notorious alchemist/physician/polyglot who many believe to be a sorcerer, to Languedoc to solve the perplexing mystery. Along the way, Balian gains an unlikely partner in his investigations, a possibly clairvoyant noblewoman who disguises herself as a man . . . and they are plunged into a violent conspiracy of betrayal, deception, greed, and lust that could cost them their lives . . . and spark a massacre.