Anthony R Wildman

Will Shakespeare, newly returned from his adventures in Italy, has at last got his start in the career that will define his life, by joining one of London's acting troupes, the Queen's Men. An unexpected death while the company is on tour seems about to give him his big break, but instead he finds himself drawn reluctantly back into the murky world of espionage in a year when England faces the challenge of the Spanish Armada and the possibility of invasion.Alive with period detail, this meticulously researched second novel in Anthony Wildman's Lost Years series takes the reader deep into the world of Elizabethan theatre just as it is entering upon its golden age, when giants such as Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene were turning the world of English literature on its head.

Florence, 1498. The long rule of the Medici is over and a new regime has emerged from the turbulence, a genuine republic of the people. But Florence is weak and threatened by a new warlord who is rampaging across central Italy-Cesare Borgia. Niccol Machiavelli is young and inexperienced when he becomes second secretary of the Florentine chancellery, but he is destined to become his city's leading diplomat. As he tries to counter the Borgia threat, Machiavelli is plunged into the grim realities of power politics, negotiates with kings and popes, and learns that no one can be trusted.In the tradition of Hilary Mantel, this is the story of a skilled diplomat whose name has become a byword for treachery and double dealing.