The best books about monarchy

The Shadows of Heaven follows Havena Bernheim, a high school graduate who has learned to be content regarding the absence of her father’s brown skin, the silence of her mother beneath inherited brunette curls, and the intentionally barren interior in her New Jersey, childhood home. But when a typical run to the grocery store on her mother’s behalf ends with a brown-winged angel tackling a demon in front of her, Havena’s eyes are opened to an entirely new world full of enemies, love, and the depths of an angelic power that the angel realms are prophesied to fear, all because of the blood in her veins… 

In this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated personalities, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Andrew Scott Cooper traces the Shah's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. He draws the turbulence of the post-war era during which the Shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers.

Readers get the story of the Shah's political career alongside the story of his courtship and marriage to Farah Diba, who became a power in her own right, the beloved family they created, and an exclusive look at life inside the palace during the Iranian Revolution. Cooper's investigative account ultimately delivers the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty through the eyes of those who were there: leading Iranian revolutionaries; President Jimmy Carter and White House officials; US Ambassador William Sullivan and his staff in the American embassy in Tehran; American families caught up in the drama; even Empress Farah herself, and the rest of the Iranian Imperial family.

Intimate and sweeping at once, The Fall of Heaven recreates in stunning detail the dramatic and final days of one of the world's most legendary ruling families, the unseating of which helped set the stage for the current state of the Middle East.

On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.

Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

Elizabeth II, Queen of England and all she surveys, is feeling low. The Diana debacle has shown her just how much the British public rates her lifetime of service. As a cure for her depression, she decides to make an impromptu outing to Scotland. She’s going all by herself on a public train. A mismatched group of staff members are on her trail and following close behind. They’re trying to bring her back before the tabloids find out what’s happened. In the course of her journey she makes a surprising rediscovery, her vocation.

The once-mighty kingdom of Mercia is in perilous danger. Their King, Beornwulf lies dead and years of bitter in-fighting between the nobles, and cross-border wars have left Mercia exposed to her enemies. King Ecgberht of Wessex senses now is the time for his warriors to strike and exact his long-awaited bloody revenge on Mercia.

King Wiglaf, has claimed his right to rule Mercia, but can he unite a disparate Kingdom against the might of Wessex who is braying for blood and land? Can King Wiglaf keep the dragons at bay or is Mercia doomed to disappear beneath the wings of the Wessex wyvern? Can anyone save Mercia from destruction?

Oliver Cromwell is the great villain of Irish history, remembered for two spectacular massacres, a scorched-earth military campaign, a policy of banishing priests to Barbados, forced population transfers, and massive land confiscation. My book attempts to chase down all the diverse ways in which Cromwell was bitterly remembered in order to understand the importance of his legacy in shaping modern Irish history and identity. Ruins on the landscape were said to be inflicted “by Cromwell and his men”; Gaelic poets cursed him with venom; political agitators invoked his name in speeches; and folk tales described him as a monster, a cobbler, or a king. The book raises larger questions about the purpose of national villains and the creative channels by which people made meaning out of traumatized pasts.

John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans.

He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics.

War is nothing new in Emporis. First, it was waged against the elves. Then the dragons and their warlock riders. Now, Sihmoria is threatening to take over the continent, and it’s up to a headstrong princess and a young dragon to stop it.

Follow Silvia Reed and her close companion Olzrim on their adventure through danger, loss, and magic as they fight to keep each other, and their homeland, safe.

In this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated personalities, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Andrew Scott Cooper traces the Shah's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. He draws the turbulence of the post-war era during which the Shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers.

Readers get the story of the Shah's political career alongside the story of his courtship and marriage to Farah Diba, who became a power in her own right, the beloved family they created, and an exclusive look at life inside the palace during the Iranian Revolution. Cooper's investigative account ultimately delivers the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty through the eyes of those who were there: leading Iranian revolutionaries; President Jimmy Carter and White House officials; US Ambassador William Sullivan and his staff in the American embassy in Tehran; American families caught up in the drama; even Empress Farah herself, and the rest of the Iranian Imperial family.

Intimate and sweeping at once, The Fall of Heaven recreates in stunning detail the dramatic and final days of one of the world's most legendary ruling families, the unseating of which helped set the stage for the current state of the Middle East.

Erik Eleodum never wanted to be a hero. Fate had a different plan. Erik is content farming for his family for the rest of his life, while his brother and cousin can't think of a worse fate. For different reasons, they leave the life they know behind. Soon, their world crashes down around them as they realize it is cruel, brutal, selfish, and violent. Now, they must not only rely on one another, but also on gypsies, thieves, mercenaries, dwarves, and a mage for their survival.

In the end, Erik will face danger, deceit, murder, death, evil, and—most terrifyingly—himself to become the hero he was always meant to be as an ancient evil many thought only a myth resurfaces.