'The Powder of Death' opens with a returned envoy to China meeting an English scholar in Oxford in the mid-13th century to share a deadly secret. They vow that the knowledge of gunpowder must die with them as the consequences otherwise are too terrible to contemplate. The novel tells the story of its re-discovery, one man's obsession with the powder of death, and Edward III's determination to use it to his advantage. He does so at the Battle of Crecy,...

England, 1348. A gentlewoman is fleeing an odious arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor is returning home to Avignon and a handsome young ploughman in search of adventure is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais. Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the...

The year is 1346 and King Edward III is restless. Despite earlier victories his army has still not achieved a major breakthrough and the French crown remains intact. Determined to bring France under English rule and the French army to its knees he has regrouped and planned a new route of attack. England, the little nation with its puny chivalry so sneered at by the great French army, is launching a fearful assault. A chevauchee so violent, so brutal...

1361. Plague has returned to England - thirteen years after the devastation of The Black Death. As destruction advances towards his estate in Kent, Oswald de Lacy leads his family to the safety of a remote castle in the marshes - where his friend Godfrey is preparing a fortress to survive the coming disaster. The rules are clear: once the de Lacys and other guests are inside the castle the portcullis will be lowered and no-one permitted to enter or...

In the summer of 1358 the physician Matthew Bartholomew returns to Cambridge to learn that his beloved sister is in mourning after the unexpected death of her husband, Oswald Stanmore. Aware that his son has no interest in the cloth trade that made his fortune and reputation, Oswald has left the business to his widow, but a spate of burglaries in the town distracts Matthew from supporting Edith in her grief and attempting to keep the peace between...

When physician, Matthew Bartholomew is called to examine some mysterious bones found in the King's Ditch, strange things begin to happen in this engaging and intricate historical mystery.

In 1358, over a century after its foundation in Cambridge, the college of Michaelhouse is facing a serious shortfall of funds and competition from rival upstarts. Their problems are made no easier by the hostility of the town's inhabitants who favour the university moving away, but this simmering tension threatens to break into violence when a well-known tradesman is found dead in one of the colleges. Matthew Bartholomew knows he was poisoned but...

In 1360 Edward III issues a call to arms, as sporadic attacks by the French threaten to turn into a full-blown invasion. In Cambridge, fear of the enemy is magnified by the belief that foreign agents are lurking in the area. Tension runs ever higher as rumours and ignorance fan the flames of suspicion amid preparations for war. And then the first murder occurs - of a French scholar living in the town. At Michaelhouse, Brother Michael is now Master,...

Winter, 1362. After years of successful campaigning in France, Thomas Blackstone, a common archer knighted at Crecy, has rised to become Edward III's Master of War. But the title is as much a curse as a blessing. Success has brought few rewards: his family - bar his son Henry - are dead, slaughtered; his enemies only multiply. Death, in so many guises, beckons. As he battles to enforce his King's claim to France's lands, Blackstone will assault an...

The aged and saintly master of Michaelhouse is to retire and Runham all but declares himself the new master. Unpopular though he is, his murder spurs Matthew Bartholomew into investigating the crime and several others like it.