Harry Sidebottom 4 Book Collection Set - Fiction - Paperback

Titles In The Set: 1. The Last Hour 2. The Lost Ten 3. The Return 4. The Burning Road Description: The Last Hour A lone figure stands silhouetted atop the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Behind him, the sun is setting over the centre of the known world. Far below, the river is in full flood. The City of Rome lies spread out before him on the far bank. Footsteps pound up the stairs. He's been set up. An enemy is closing in; he is cornered. He jumps. Bruised and battered, he crawls out of the raging river. He is alone and unarmed, without money or friends, trapped in a deadly conspiracy at the heart of the Empire. The City Watch has orders to take him alive; other, more sinister, forces want him dead. As the day dies, he realises he has only 24 hours to expose the conspirators, and save the leader of the world. If the Emperor dies, chaos and violence will ensue. If the Emperor dies, every single person he loves will die. He must run, bluff, hide and fight his way across the Seven Hills. He must reach the Colosseum, and the Emperor. He must make it to The Last Hour. The Lost Ten No man who enters the Castle of Silence ever walks out alive. A remote fortress prison set high in the mountains, escape is impossible - and to break someone out, unthinkable. But this is exactly what Roman officer Marcus Aelius Valens must do. Tasked with rescuing the young Prince Sasan, Valens leads a small, elite squad of soldiers across Mesopotamia and into the mountains south of the Caspian Sea. As they journey deeper into enemy territory, the ten begin to die or disappear, one by one. And with the rescue fast becoming a suicide mission, Valens must marshal this disparate group of men - or suffer the same fate as all those who have made the journey before him... The Return 145BC - CALABRIA, ANCIENT ROME. After many years of spilling blood for Rome, Gaius Furius Paullus has returned home to spend his remaining days working quietly on the family farm. But it seems death has followed Paullus from the battlefield. Just days after his arrival, bodies start appearing - murdered and mutilated. And as the killings continue, and panic spreads, the war hero becomes the prime suspect. After all, Paullus has butchered countless enemies on the battlefield - could he have brought his habit home with him? With the psychological effects of combat clouding every thought, Paullus must use all his soldier's instincts to hunt the real killer. Because if they are not brought to justice soon, he may become the next victim. The Burning Road AD265 - In the shadow of Mount Etna, slaves are rising up. As the rebel leader declares Sicily the new land of the free, men and women are slaughtered, and cities across the island are sacked and burned. When a ship is wrecked off the island's west coast, all but two survivors are cut down in the surf by the rebel slaves. Ballista, an experienced Roman soldier, has always found a way to survive against the odds - but his son Marcus is still just a boy. With the burning road stretching out ahead of them, father and son must cross the war-ravaged island in a race against time to save the rest of his family, and somehow find a way to extinguish the brutal rebellion, before it all goes up in flames.