The Bow of Heaven: Book I: The Other Alexander

Winner! 2011 Gold Award in Historical Fiction from eLit Book Awards

Nominated for best in Historical Fiction:  2012 Global eBook Awards

In the greatest, foulest city in the world, love, mayhem and betrayal find the slave, Alexandros. Given as a gift to the richest man in Rome, he soon discovers that intrigue and murder stalk the house of his master. Yet, if he solves the crime, the worst punishment may prove to be his own.

"Readers of Steven Saylor or John Maddox Roberts, accustomed to paying $25 for their latest in hardover, can download The Bow of Heaven (complete with its bizarrely hideous cover), as good as anything either one ever wrote, for $3 in about ten seconds. Enthusiastically recommended." - Historical Novel Society

Alexander is astute, well-educated and brimming with caustic wit, but he can't seem to remember the golden rule of slavery:  keep your head down and your mouth shut. No wonder more than one person in the house of Marcus Crassus wants to see this former Greek philosophy student dead.

Through accident and intervention, Alexander manages to survive, but is he willing to take the proffered hand of the one ally he wants desperately to despise - his owner? Every boon and advancement accepted from Crassus is an acknowledgment that his former life is gone. Yet how can he resist? Crassus is a good man, for a Roman.

At last, Alexander realizes that accepting his condition is the only way to recoup the little freedom left him. He willingly opens his eyes to his new life ... and immediately falls in love with Livia, a fellow servant he's never allowed himself to see. But romance for a slave is a fragile thing, especially when tragedy befalls the Crassus household in the person of Gaius Julius Caesar and his insatiable ambition.

Alexander has won the ear of Crassus, but can a slave keep a master of Rome from making a choice which will topple the foundations of an empire?