With her country's future and her own life at stake, an orphaned duchess must journey into a world of myth and there discover a power that may be her salvation—or her demise—in this enchanting new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Winternight Trilogy and The Warm Hands of Ghosts. Anne of Brittany was a child when her realm was invaded, her home besieged, and her royal father driven to his death. Now her treasury is empty, her land occupied by her enemies, and she is ordered, under threat of renewed war, to become queen of her conquerors and marry the King of France. This marriage means her country’s annexation. But Anne promised her father that Brittany would never be conquered. Defiantly, she betroths herself in secret to France’s greatest enemy. But in a world where courts may spy on each other by magic, there is only one way to solemnize this illicit union. Anne takes her court deep into a legendary forest, where the court diviners’ skill cannot reach. The world thinks they are only a hunting party, coursing after unicorns. But that is a lie, a trick, a feint. No one in living memory has seen a unicorn. All Anne wants is this secret wedding, which is her only hope of salvation. But when against all hope a unicorn appears and a stranger out of legend stumbles from the trees and falls at her feet, Anne is plunged into a world of enchantment where a doomed sovereign might find the power to change her own and her country’s destiny—or be lost in the shadows forever.

The history of the vast Indian subcontinent is usually told as a series of ephemeral moments when a large part of modern-day India was ruled by a single sovereign. There is an obsession with foreign invasions and the polities of the Gangetic plains, while the histories of the rest of the subcontinent have been reduced to little more than dry footnotes. Now, in this brilliant and critically acclaimed debut book, Anirudh Kanisetti shines a light into the darkness, bringing alive for the lay-reader the early medieval Deccan, from the sixth century CE to the twelfth century CE, in all its splendour and riotous glory. Kanisetti takes us back in time to witness the birth of the Chalukyas, a dynasty that shaped southern India for centuries. Beginning at a time when Hinduism was still establishing itself through the Deccan, when the landscape was bereft of temples, he explores the extraordinary transformation of the peninsula over half a millennium. In vivid and colourful detail, Kanisetti describes how the mighty empires of medieval India were made: how temple-building and language manipulation were used as political tools; how royals involved themselves in religious struggles between Jains and Buddhists, Shaivas and Vaishnavas; and how awe-inspiring rituals were used to elevate kings over their rivals and subjects. In doing so, he transforms medieval Indian royals, merchants and commoners from obscure figures to complex, vibrant people. Kanisetti takes us into the minds of powerful rulers of the Chalukya, Pallava, Rashtrakuta and Chola dynasties, and animates them and their world with humanity and depth. It is a world of bloody elephant warfare and brutal military stratagems; of alliances and betrayals; where a broken king commits ritual suicide, and a shrewd hunchbacked prince founds his own kingdom under his powerful brother’s nose. This is a world where a king writes a bawdy play that is a parable for religious contestation; where the might of India’s rulers and the wealth of its cities were talked of from Arabia to Southeast Asia; and where south Indian kingdoms serially invaded and defeated those of the north. This painstakingly researched forgotten history of India will keep you riveted and enthralled. You will never see the history of the subcontinent the same way again.