Greece - historical fiction
Explore captivating historical fiction set in Greece. Discover top books that bring ancient myths, legendary battles, and Greek history to life in vivid storytelling.
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Gates of Fire
by Steven Pressfield
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Steven Pressfield brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life.”—Pat Conroy At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army. Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history—one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. . . .
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The Virtues of War
by Steven Pressfield
I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexander’s extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warrior’s unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories. Whether surviving his father’s brutal assassination, presiding over a massacre, or weeping at the death of a beloved comrade-in-arms, Alexander never denies the hard realities of the code by which he lives: the virtues of war. But as much as he was feared by his enemies, he was loved and revered by his friends, his generals, and the men who followed him into battle. Often outnumbered, never outfought, Alexander conquered every enemy the world stood against him–but the one he never saw coming. . . .
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Tides of War
by Steven Pressfield
Brilliant at war, a master of politics, and a charismatic lover, Alcibiades was Athens’ favorite son and the city’s greatest general. A prodigal follower of Socrates, he embodied both the best and the worst of the Golden Age of Greece. A commander on both land and sea, he led his armies to victory after victory. But like the heroes in a great Greek tragedy, he was a victim of his own pride, arrogance, excess, and ambition. Accused of crimes against the state, he was banished from his beloved Athens, only to take up arms in the service of his former enemies. For nearly three decades, Greece burned with war and Alcibiades helped bring victories to both sides — and ended up trusted by neither. Narrated from death row by Alcibiades’ bodyguard and assassin, a man whose own love and loathing for his former commander mirrors the mixed emotions felt by all Athens, Tides of War tells an epic saga of an extraordinary century, a war that changed history, and a complex leader who seduced a nation.
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The Last of the Wine
by Mary Renault
In The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs.
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Fire from Heaven
by Mary Renault
Alexander’s beauty, strength, and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son’s loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle’s tutoring provoked his mind and Homer’s Iliad fueled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon’s cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander’s skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.
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The Persian Boy
by Mary Renault
“It takes skill to depict, as Miss Renault has done, this half-man, half Courtesan who is so deeply in love with the warrior.”–The Atlantic Monthly The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander’s mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone.
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The Afghan Campaign
by Steven Pressfield
2,300 years ago an unbeaten army of the West invaded the homeland of a fierce Eastern tribal foe. This is one soldier’s story . . . The bestselling novelist of ancient warfare returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 b.c. In a story that might have been ripped from today’s combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield brings to life the confrontation between an invading Western army and fierce Eastern warriors determined at all costs to defend their homeland. Narrated by an infantryman in Alexander’s army, The Afghan Campaign explores the challenges, both military and moral, that Alexander and his soldiers face as they embark on a new type of war and are forced to adapt to the methods of a ruthless foe that employs terror and insurgent tactics. An edge-of-your-seat adventure, The Afghan Campaign once again demonstrates Pressfield’s profound understanding of the hopes and desperation of men in battle and of the historical realities that continue to influence our world.
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The King Must Die
by Mary Renault
In this ambitious, ingenious narrative, celebrated historical novelist Mary Renault take legendary hero Theseus and spins his myth into a fast-paced and exciting story. Renault starts with Theseus' early years, showing how the mystery of his father's identity and his small stature breed the insecurities that spur his youthful hijinx. As he moves on to Eleusis, Athens, and Crete, his playfulness and fondness for pranks matures into the courage to attempt singular heroic feats, the gallantry and leadership he was known for on the battlefield, and the bold-hearted ingenuity he shows in navigating the labyrinth and slaying the Minotaur. In what is perhaps the most inventive of all her novels of Ancient Greece, Renault casts Theseus in a surprisingly original pose; she teases the flawed human out of the bronze hero, and draws the plausible out of the fantastic.
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Spartan
by Valerio Massimo Manfredi
Full of passion, courage and magic, Spartan is an enthralling novel of the ancient world.
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Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow
by David Gemmell
With this first masterly volume in an epic reimagining of the Trojan War, David Gemmell has written an ageless drama of brave deeds and fierce battles, of honor and treachery, of love won and lost. He is a man of many names. Some call him the Golden One; others, the Lord of the Silver Bow. To the Dardanians, he is Prince Aeneas. But to his friends, he is Helikaon. Strong, fast, quick of mind, he is a bold warrior, hated by his enemies, feared even by his Trojan allies. For there is a darkness at the heart of the Golden One, a savagery that, once awakened, can be appeased only with blood. Argurios the Mykene is a peerless fighter, a man of unbending principles and unbreakable will. Like all of the Mykene warriors, he lives to conquer and to kill. Dispatched by King Agamemnon to scout the defenses of the golden city of Troy, he is Helikaon’s sworn enemy. Andromache is a priestess of Thera betrothed against her will to Hektor, prince of Troy. Scornful of tradition, skilled in the arts of war, and passionate in the ways of her order, Andromache vows to love whom she pleases and to live as she desires. Now fate is about to thrust these three together–and, from the sparks of passionate love and hate, ignite a fire that will engulf the world.
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Alexander
by Valerio Manfredi
Continuing the epic saga of Alexander the Great. The Sands of Ammon brilliantly describes Alexander's quest to conquer Asia, the limitless domain ruled by the Great King of the Persians. In a seemingly impossible venture, Alexander and his men storm Persian fortresses and harbours, crippling King Daruis' domination of land and sea. Even the legendary Haliacarnassus is defeated by the Macedionan armies. Ruthlessly, Alexander's war machine moves ever onward taking him up into the snow-covered Anatolian highlands, and ever closer to his destiny. But there is much danger ahead. Despite the defeat of Daruis, the Island City of Tyre and the Towers of Gaza prove to be formidable obstacles. Undeterred, Alexander surges forth over land and sea to the mysterious land of Egypt And there, in the sands, lies the Oracle of Ammon, waiting to reveal an amazing truth to Alexander. One that will change his already amazing life
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Alexander
by Valerio Manfredi
Alexander's epic quest continues into the heart of Asia and on towards the mystery of India. The Macedonian Army march ever onward in search of glory, crushing resistance at every turn. The culture and beauty of Babylon is quickly ravaged and the Palace of Persepolis burnt to ashes and cinder. An empire is destroyed and a new and bloody era begins. But there are other things on Alexander's mind. An ambitious project to unite the peoples of the empire under one homeland, begins to obsess him. There are rebellions and bloodshed, but the curious beauty of Queen Roxanna gives Alexander the strength to fulfil his destiny... This is a truly compelling, romantic and exciting book, and a fitting conclusion to the bestselling Alexander trilogy.
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Tyrant
by Christian Cameron
Ruler. Puppet Master. Killer. Glory. Death. Well-born Athenian cavalry officer, Kineas, fought shoulder to shoulder with Alexander in his epic battles against the Persian hordes. But on his return from the east to his native city, he finds not glory but shame - and exile. With nothing to his name but his military skills, Kineas agrees to lead a band of veterans to the city of Olbia, where the Tyrant is offering good money to train the city's elite cavalry. But soon Kineas and his men find they have stumbled into a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy as the Tyrant plots to use them as pawns in the increasingly complex power games between his own citizens, and the dread military might of Macedon. Caught between his duty to the Tyrant, his loyalty to his men and a forbidden love affair with a charismatic Scythian noblewoman, Kineas must call on all his Athenian guile, his flair on the battlefield, and even - he is convinced - the intervention of the gods, to survive.
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Tyrant - Funeral Games
by Christian Cameron
Satyrus and Melitta, twin heirs to a rich kingdom on the Black Sea, become desperate figitives when their mother, the Scythian warrior-princess Srayanka, is cut town in a savage act of betrayal.