Mary Renault

In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault's Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure-a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness-but also one steered by implacable prophecy. The story...

A WWII soldier embarks on affairs with two very different men in a landmark novel that “transcends categorizations” (The Telegraph).
 After being wounded at Dunkirk in World War II, Laurie Odell is sent back home to a rural British hospital. Standing out among the orderlies is Andrew, a bright conscientious objector raised as a Quaker. The unspoken romance between the two men is tested when Ralph, a friend...

In The Bull from the Sea, the story of Theseus resumes with the hero's return from Knossos. In the wake of his father's suicide, Athens is now Theseus's to rule. With his close friend Pirithoos, Theseus sets out for the land of the Amazons, falling in love with their beautiful leader, Hippolyta. Her boldness and sense of honor match his own, but though they're happy and bear a son, tragedy lies ahead. The Athenians mistrust the foreign Hippolyta,...

Alexias is a young aristocrat living during the end of Athens's Golden Age. Prized for his beauty and athletic prowess, Alexias studies under Sokrates with his closest friend, Lysis. Together, the young men come of age in an Athens on the verge of great upheaval. They attend the Olympics, partake in symposia, fight on the battlefields of the Peloponnesian War, and fall in love. The first of Mary Renault's celebrated historical novels of ancient Greece,...

By the end of his reign, Alexander the Great had seized control of an empire that extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. When he died in 323 BC, a fervent scramble for power ensued. Funeral Games is Mary Renault's remarkable novel of this turmoil and the gradual erosion of the Greek empire. The power players include Ptolemy, two father-son teams, and a cadre of influential women-not least of whom is Eurydike, whose plan is to marry Alexander's...

Sicily -- Keos -- Samos -- Athens -- Sacred way -- Author's note -- Chronology.

Romance of two young English mountaineers.

A special three-in-one edition of Mary Renault's acclaimed historical novels about the life and times of Alexander the Great. Fire from Heaven is a gripping account of the formative years of Alexander's life. The story tells of his complex relationship with his parents; of his two great bonds-to his horse, Oxhead, and to his dearest friend and eventual lover, Hephaistion-and of the army he commands when he is barely an adult. Coming of age during...