Lydia Leonard

Sarah Perry's father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. Until then he'd been a healthy and happy man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels, his local church, and the Antiques Roadshow. He was in some ways a very ordinary man, but as he began to die, it became clear how extraordinary he was.

Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David themselves at home, eventually with the help of carers and visiting nurses. They bathed and cleaned and dressed him, comforted him in pain, sat with him through waking and sleeping, talked to him, sang to him, prayed with him. Day by day and hour by hour, they witnessed what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches and finally arrives.

Ancient Rome, AD 37. It begins with a man's hand curled around another's throat. Emperor Tiberius first dispatches a traitor. Then his whole family. Next all his friends. It is as if he never existed.

Into this fevered forum, a child is born. His mother is Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. But their imperial blood is no protection. The closer you are to the heart of the empire, the closer you are to power, intrigue, and danger.

She faces soldiers, senators, rivals, silver-tongued pretenders, each vying for position. One mistake risks exile, incarceration, execution. Or, worst of all, the loss of her infant son.

For Agrippina knows that opportunity waits, even in your darkest moments. Her son is everything. She can make this boy, shape him into Rome itself - the one all must kneel before.

Book 1 in the Nero series.

The boy Nero lives. His mother Agrippina has married her way to power, tangling the Emperor Claudius in her skirts.

The emperor may have a son and heir of his own, but Agrippina sees no obstacles to her ambition.

Rome is a path through a marsh, lit by torches. Those who walk it are always one step from disaster - and the road itself is treacherous, slippery with blood.

Claudius may have the world at his feet, but he has Agrippina in his bed.

Book 2 in the Nero series.