Here are 100 books that Dark Horizon fans have personally recommended if you like
Dark Horizon.
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Having lived in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, and visited many, many more countries, I am a traveler first and foremost. I travel because I like getting to know different types of people and seeing how they live and how they think about the world and about their place in it. As a historian, I can travel back in time to places even more exotic than one can visit today. My favorite place is the Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages – an exciting environment where Christians, Muslims, and Jews from Africa, Europe, and Asia, came together sometimes in conflict, but as often as not in collaboration or friendship.
That Most Precious Merchandise offers a much needed and evocatively-written reassessment of the experience of slavery in the late medieval Mediterranean. Tracing the networks of the slave trade from the Black Sea to Genoa, Venice, and Cairo, it argues that the Italian maritime powers and the Mamluk sultanate shared a similar approach to slavery. By re-assessing Black Sea slavery from the vantage point of both Italy and Egypt, Barker discerns commonalities in systems and approaches to slavery across cultures—she calls this a common culture of slavery. She presents as the principal themes of the book a series of conceptions and practices of slavery that cut across confessional and cultural lines, upending a number of fundamental paradigms that have shaped, and limited, the scholarly terrain.
The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves stretches from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day. At its height during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Black Sea slave trade was not the sole source of Mediterranean slaves; Genoese, Venetian, and Egyptian merchants bought captives taken in conflicts throughout the region, from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Aegean Sea. Yet the trade in Black Sea slaves provided merchants with profit and prestige; states with military recruits, tax revenue, and diplomatic influence; and households with the service of…
I was a very bright little girl growing up in Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1960s. I passed the entrance exam for Girls’ Latin School in Boston without difficulty and set out for a lifelong journey through many great institutions of higher learning. By the time I was a university student, I knew I wanted to help solve social problems. So, I chose to become an economist. I’m a bit techy but I also have a passion for great writing and history. In recent years, my profession has allowed me to get to know Asia and its amazing cultures through my visits to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, China, India, and my current abode, Beirut!
I read this wonderful book in the early 2000s when I had returned to Istanbul, Türkiye back from a professional position in the UK.
I was captivated by its description of the flora and fauna of our geography. I recall reading how the beloved chestnut trees of our region had made their way there from China. Braudel is an economic historian who is known to have placed physical and biological nature in the foreground of historical analysis. Thus, according to Braudel, nature is not merely space to be conquered or to be shaped by human desires.
Indeed, the organization of economic life in the Mediterranean was probably shaped by the diversity and difficulty of its geography as much as shaping it, as we argued in our article on Mediterranean business cycles published with Fabio Canova in Open Economies Review in 2013.
This general reader's history of the ancient mediterranean combines a thorough grasp of the scholarship of the day with an great historian's gift for imaginative reconstruction and inspired analogy. Extensive notes allow the reader to appreciate thestate of scholarship at the time of writing, the scale and breadth of Braudel's learning and the points where orthodoxy has changed, sometimes vindicating Braudel, sometimes proving him wrong. Above all the book offers us the chance to situate Braudel's mediterranean, born of a lifetime's love and knowledge, more clearly in the climates of the sea's history.
Raised crisscrossing America, I developed a ceaseless wanderlust that took me around the world many times. En route, I collected the stories and characters that make up my work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: I hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had me smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed me in an African jail. Greece, where I’ve spent some seven years total, stole my heart 50 years ago.
The setup of The Rebellious Tide instantly made me want to read it.
A man abandons his pregnant wife, and thirty years later Sebastien, their son, seeks him out, wanting an explanation and revenge. The father is the captain of a luxury liner cruising the Mediterranean, and Sebastien joins the crew to secretly stalk his father to find out what kind of person he is.
The story is full of mystery and disturbing elements, not to mention fluid sexuality. Ultimately, Sebastien discovers something his father has hidden in the belly of the ship that makes him confront what he’s feared about his own identity. A new twist on a high seas mystery!
Sebastien's search for his father leads him to a ship harbouring a dangerous secret.
Sebastien has heard only stories about his father, a mysterious sailor who abandoned his pregnant mother thirty years ago. But when his mother dies after a lifetime of struggle, he becomes obsessed with finding an explanation - perhaps even revenge.
The father he's never met is Kostas, the commanding officer of a luxury liner sailing the Mediterranean. Posing as a member of the ship's crew, Sebastien stalks his unwitting father in search of answers as to why he disappeared so many years ago.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
I am an avid Hispanist and have for a long time been fascinated by the mix of cultures in medieval Spain. Soon after 9-11, I was forced to take part in a barefoot ritual of security checks on arriving at Zaragoza airport to see something of the Moorish heritage there, and it hit me how important the way we tell the story of ‘Moors and Christians’ is to our own times. My own experience as a linguist and of living abroad made me particularly interested in people who are able to see both sides of a story and transfer between cultures. This is what I researched further in my Ph.D. in relation to the demise of Muslim Granada.
Here’s another true story written as a novel, this time an autobiography, which I love. Again, the locations are fantastic, it’s something of a travelogue, and there’s a strong element of cross-cultural fluidity.
The hero of the book is a Muslim exile from Granada who was brought up in Fez and became an itinerant merchant, journeying through the Sahara and what is now Sudan before settling in Cairo. On his way back to Fez, he was captured by pirates, sent to Rome, converted to Christianity, became a translator and researcher for the Pope, and wrote a description of Africa. Oh, and then he goes back to North Africa and converts back to Islam.
From his chlidhood in Fez, having fled the Christian Inquisition, through his many journeys to the East as an itinerant merhcant, Hasans story is a quixotic catalogue of pirates, slave girls and princesses, encompassing the complexities of a world in a state of religious flux. Hasan too is touched by the instability of the era, performing his hadj to Mecca, then converting to Christianity, only to relapse back to the Muslim faith later in life. In re-creating his extraordinary experiences, Amin Maalouf sketches an irrisistible portrait of the Mediterranea world as it was nearly five centuries ago - the fall…
I’m American but I’ve been a Francophile for ages. I didn’t get a chance to visit France until well into adulthood. So much history lives in France and it’s been my joy to illuminate it for readers who tell me they feel transported. There is no higher compliment, in my mind. I’ve been writing novels for thirty years, set in the Rocky Mountains, America’s heartland, and the scenic villages of France. The Bennett Sisters Mysteries are now up 18 books in the series, featuring settings from Paris to Champagne to the Dordogne, with more in the works. I must go back to France to research, oui?
Browsing at Shakespeare and Company in Paris last fall I picked up this book in translation by Guillaume Musso, touted as the ‘French Suspense King.’ Set on an isolated island off the Côte d’Azur, this moody thriller is unpredictable and twisty, as all good mysteries should be. A reclusive author, his strange past, a relentless fan: what could go wrong?
'It's no wonder that Musso is one of France's most loved, bestselling authors' Harlan Coben
In 1999, after publishing three cult novels, celebrated author Nathan Fawles announces the end of his writing career and withdraws to Beaumont, a wild and beautiful island off the Mediterranean coast.
Autumn 2018. As Fawles' novels continue to captivate readers, Mathilde Monney, a young Swiss journalist, arrives on the island, determined to unlock the writer's secrets and secure his first interview in twenty years.
That same day, a woman's body is discovered on the beach and the island…
Quite young, I realized my life was based on the fantasies and wish-fulfillments of my parents. As a teenager I turned to science fiction and fantasy whose stories so often engaged imaginatively and decisively with fundamental issues of good and evil, truth and falsity, courage and deception, unlike my reality. In my struggle to portray that reality and its transformation something Freud wondered about proved helpful, whether our careful effort to reconstruct the past was wholly true or in part illusory. If it was effective as an explanation, then he felt it was valid, and I have written in the same spirit.
This was published as three separate novels that tell one coherent story (I. Beat to Quarters, II. Ship of the Line, III. Flying Colours). I spent a lot of time in the Hornblower world as an adolescent, an imaginary reality I sensed wasn't wholly imaginary—The Napoleonic Wars were real—although Hornblower is fictional. But we're all heroes of our own stories. What especially appealed is the portrait of a hero divided between alternating bursts of confident action and moments of intense self-doubt. That accords almost exactly with how I was made to feel as a child, at once supremely able and a second later, consumed by doubt and a sense of inadequacy.
This omnibus edition of the Hornblower Saga contains the first three novels C.S. Forester wrote about Horatio Hornblower — Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours. During the Age of Sail, mastery of the art of naval warfare was daunting — the necessary knowledge and skill required was massive, the need for resourceful leadership essential, and the ability to face war and savagery critical. The complexity of the ships will stagger, the battles will haunt your dreams, and the men will consume your imagination. C.S. Forester brings it all to life.
I’m a writer and educator working in central Virginia, and I’ve been in love with the ancient world since my first Latin class back in the seventh grade. I’ve always been interested in social history more than just the chronology of battles and the deeds of famous men, so my research looks for sources that can illuminate daily life and the viewpoints of marginalized populations. I hold a BA in English and History from the College of William and Mary and an MLitt from Mary Baldwin University.
This travelogue looks at the Mediterranean with dual vision: one ancient eye and one modern. Perrottet retraces the route taken by the wealthy Romans who were, in a sense, the world’s first tourists, living with enough safety and comfort to travel for leisure rather than necessity. He begins in Italy, then the Greek mainland and some island-hopping, makes a necessary stop in Troy, then moves down the Turkish coast and finally into Egypt. In doing so, he provides perspective both on what the Romans would have expected and discovered along the journey as well as what a modern-day traveller would find 2000 years later. The similarities are as surprising as the differences!
The ancient Romans were responsible for many remarkable achievements—Roman numerals, straight roads—but one of their lesser-known contributions was the creation of the tourist industry. The first people in history to enjoy safe and easy travel, Romans embarked on the original Grand Tour, journeying from the lost city of Troy to the Acropolis, from the Colossus at Rhodes to Egypt, for the obligatory Nile cruise to the very edge of the empire. And, as Tony Perrottet discovers, the popularity of this route has only increased with time.
Intrigued by the possibility of re-creating the tour, Perrottet, accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend,…
I’ve loved history since my grandfather told me tales about my ancestors and their exploits. I haunted libraries, reading up on whatever current era I had a passion for: Roman, medieval England, American Civil War, etc. but I was always disappointed that little or no space was given to women’s stories. They had to have existed or all those famous men wouldn’t have been born. It took some digging and a feminist revolution, but finally remarkable women’s lives began to surface in academia and I now turn their stories into popular fiction. I hope these recommendations help readers learn about awesome women who didn’t make it into the history books. Enjoy!
This one is just for fun. I regularly pick up these modern collections of brief biographies of ancient warrior women, doomed queens, she captains, etc. I like to see if “my” characters are included and how they fare with a non-scholarly author. Also, I like to see if any catch my eye for further research and possibly(?) a novel.
Like its sister books, this one is written in a breezy modern style with a certain amount of snark. Leon gives two pages each to about one hundred women who lived from 2500 BC to AD 450 around the Mediterranean and the western Roman provinces. All are real women who made a difference and their names survived, but you’ve probably never heard of most of them. Check it out!
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know that its climate is unique in the U.S. and that there are many microclimates within the region. It’s all mediterranean, as you can tell by its dry summers and mild, wet winters. But near the coast, summer fog carpets the land for weeks and winter is rarely frosty, while inland summers are hot, winter frosts are frequent. I live here and use my academic and first-hand experience with plants to help regional gardeners create year-round beauty and harvests in all of our wonderful, often perplexing microclimates.
Historically,
California native plants were often grown in European gardens before they were
accepted into California gardens. Now they are being grown in California for
their beauty and frequent drought tolerance. Here you will see photos of plants
in garden landscapes with information about the regions in which they will
grow, their needs, and their care.
California Native Plants for the Garden is a comprehensive resource that features more than 500 of the best California native plants for gardening in Mediterranean-climate areas of the world. Authored by three of the state's leading native-plant horticulturists and illustrated with 450 color photos, this reference book also includes chapters on landscape design, installation, and maintenance. Detailed lists of recommended native plants for a variety of situations and appendices with information on places to see native plants and where to buy them are also provided.
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
I'm a Scottish writer, addicted to reading and writing historical fiction. My love of history was first kindled by visits to the misty Roman ruins of Britain and the sun-baked antiquities of Turkey and Greece. My expeditions since have taken me all over the world and back and forth through time (metaphorically, at least), allowing me to write tales of the later Roman Empire, Byzantium, Classical Greece and even the distant Bronze Age.
The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age. What caused this epochal shift? Eric Cline outlines just how cataclysmic the 12th and 13th centuries BC really were. Be prepared for fire, earthquakes, and a tide of war!
A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapse
In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the…
