CORVUS is a sweeping, slow-burning historical novel of espionage, faith, and betrayal set in the convulsive final years of Nero's Rome and the rebellion that consumed Judaea. Meticulously researched and morally unflinching, it moves like le Carre through a world of emperors and spies, zealots and survivors—and asks how much a man will destroy, in himself and in others, to serve a cause he cannot name.
AD 64. Rome burns, and Nero looks for someone to blame. The Great Fire is only the beginning of something that will outlive this age.
Within four years, the emperor is dead. Within five, the most powerful empire on earth is tearing itself apart, and four men will claim the throne in a single year of knives, ash, and broken oaths. Far to the east, in a city holy to an ancient and unbending people, the legions are massing for a war whose ending will echo for thousands of years.
These are the things the chronicles record.
They do not record the man who passed through all of it unseen—from the marble of the Palatine to the back alleys of a doomed Jerusalem, from the emperor's table to the torture cells, carrying secrets folded into wool ledgers and trade manifests. They do not record the bargains struck in the dark, or the patient, ruthless game being played behind the clash of armies.
He answers to no emperor. He is loyal to no city. And the prize he is reaching for is not a throne.
History remembers the rulers who fell and the city that burned. It was never told the truth about who controlled the strings—or what it cost the men who pulled them.
For readers of Robert Harris, Hilary Mantel, Conn Iggulden, and Steven Saylor—a debut for anyone who loves history made in the shadows.
Perfect for fans of intelligent historical fiction, ancient Rome, the Judaean wars, and spy novels where nothing is quite what it seems.
