Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon–his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic–with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.

Dynasty continues Rubicon‘s story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman emperors. It’s a colorful story of rule and ruination, from the rise of Augustus to the death of Nero. Holland’s expansive history also has distinct shades of I, Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) emperors–Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero–featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence–the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.

The evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. In this exciting and sweeping history-the third in his trilogy of books on the ancient world-Tom Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds to create an imperial civilization. With profound bearing on the most consequential events of our time, Holland ties the exciting story of Islam’s ascent to the crises and controversies of the present.

Famed nineteenth-century poet and rake Lord Byron travels to Greece and becomes the world’s most formidable vampire—entering a dark, intoxicating world of ancient arts and scorching excesses of evil—in this offbeat book by the author of Slave of My Thirst.

Traveling in the mountains of Greece, Byron falls under the spell of a mysterious fugitive slave, whose pale, slim body arouses his lust. Utterly entranced, his fate is sealed. The supreme sensualist embarks on a life of adventure‚Äîthat of the world’s most formidable vampire.

Chosen to enjoy powers beyond those any vampire has ever known, Byron enters a dark, intoxicating world of long-lost secrets, ancient arts, and scorching excesses of evil. He drinks deeply of terror and sex. But his diversions, delicious and cruel, are also his torment: an all-consuming thirst damning all those he loves…

In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history. Tom Holland’s brilliant study of these critical Persian Wars skillfully examines a conflict of critical importance to both ancient and modern history.

At the approach of the first millennium, the Christians of Europe did not seem likely candidates for future greatness. Weak, fractured, and hemmed in by hostile nations, they saw no future beyond the widely anticipated Second Coming of Christ. But when the world did not end, the peoples of Western Europe suddenly found themselves with no choice but to begin the heroic task of building a Jerusalem on earth.
In The Forge of Christendom, Tom Holland masterfully describes this remarkable new age, a time of caliphs and Viking sea kings, the spread of castles and the invention of knighthood. It was one of the most significant departure points in history: the emergence of Western Europe as a distinctive and expansionist power.