The Library of Babelouin
Ianthe sat at her desk for most of the afternoon with the letter open beside her. Outside, rain tapped the glass. The archive smelled of dust, wet coats, and old glue.
Read more →Stories: historical fiction
Echoes at Thermopylae
He loved Sparta from a distance. That was the safest way to love it. Not the actual city, with its slaves and hunger and boys trained into instruments, but the clean idea of it.
Read more →The Village That History Forgot
When Mara first saw the village, it was raining. Not hard. Not the dramatic rain of old films and schoolbook paintings, but a thin, miserable rain that soaked the wool of her borrowed cloak and found its way through every seam.
Read more →The Breathing Cave
The cave was not hard to find if you knew what you were looking for, but it did not invite finding. It lay along the coast of Eigg, tucked beneath black rock and long grass, with the sea worrying at the stones below like a dog with a bone. In fair weather the entrance seemed only a wound in the cliff, narrow and shadowed, easy to pass by if a man was thinking of sheep, or weather, or the shape of clouds over Rum. But in mist, when the land lost its edges and the sea became a gray breath, the mouth of the cave appeared larger. Not wider, exactly. More awake.
Read more →The Archivist
Part One: The Weight of Knowing Omar ibn al-Khattab had always been a man of certainties. As a young warrior, he knew the enemy by his face. As a general, he knew victory by the flag on the horizon....
Read more →The Seam In History
The first time Miriam Kowalski heard the radio lie, it did so politely. It was late August of 1939, the heat of the day stored in the brick of their tenement on Krochmalna Street, and the set on the...
Read more →The Tone Between Red Phones
On the morning the world was meant to split in two, the radio did not crackle with catastrophe. It sang. Not with music, not at first, but with a single clear tone that threaded itself into every...
Read more →The Last Gardener of Babylon
June 323 BCE The king was dying, and Namtar could not save him. Not with medicine, anyway. But perhaps with the truth. He pressed a damp cloth against Alexander's forehead, feeling the furnace...
Read more →Love in a Time of Revolution
1. The Beginning March 1, 1775 My Dearest Eleanor, As the winds of change sweep through the colonies, my heart longs for the warmth of your embrace. Life in Boston is tumultuous, with talk of...
Read more →The Night of the Wooden Shadow
For ten years the city of Troy had stood defiant, its high walls scarred but unbroken. On the evening that would be remembered long after the dust of history settled, a strange stillness clung to the...
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