At age 55, John Garcia is one of Albuquerque's most successful lawyers. His skill at defending insurance and corporate conglomerates has won the praise of the firm's other key partners, and the money he bills, their envy. Still, something nags at him...life has become nothing but business. He feels trapped, driven to keep up on the one hand and to find a way out on the other. But he has a wife and children, a family used to the good things in life that money brings. Into this setting comes a young Chicano, Bernardo Soliz, charged with the attempted murder of the mayor's daughter. John believes the boy is innocent and, despite the demands of his work, he decides to defend the young man. As he takes on the Soliz trial while trying to keep up with his other work, another challenge appears. Persons from his military past in Vietnam surface to threaten him...unless they get what they want. John is shaken. He needs time to face this new menace. But how? He's in the midst of the boy's trial. The trial is going badly, coming to an inescapable conclusion in the face of eyewitness identifications of Bernardo as the assailant. As the trial and events from his military past take their toll, another threat descends upon John...his marriage is coming apart. Amid the twists and turns in the Soliz case, he finds himself in a moral quandary. He fears his personal problems may have gotten in the way of representing Bernardo to the fullest. He feels he should hang in and fight for the boy's life. Guilt hangs over him. As the Soliz case comes to its double-twisted conclusion, John begins to get a grip on the mysterious foreign threat from the past, but not before it jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

Queen Elizabeth’s spymasters recruit an unlikely agent—the only Muslim in England—for an impossible mission in a mesmerizing novel from “one of the best writers in America” (The Washington Post) “Evokes flashes of Hilary Mantel, John le Carré and Graham Greene, but the wry, tricky plot that drives it is pure Arthur Phillips.”—The Wall Street Journal NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST The year is 1601. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, childless. Her nervous kingdom has no heir. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen’s spymasters—hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism—fear that James is not what he appears. He has every reason to claim to be a Protestant, but if he secretly shares his family’s Catholicism, then forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. With time running out, London confronts a seemingly impossible question: What does James truly believe? It falls to Geoffrey Belloc, a secret warrior from the hottest days of England’s religious battles, to devise a test to discover the true nature of King James’s soul. Belloc enlists Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Muslim physician left behind by the last diplomatic visit from the Ottoman Empire, as his undercover agent. The perfect man for the job, Ezzedine is the ultimate outsider, stranded on this cold, wet, and primitive island. He will do almost anything to return home to his wife and son. Arthur Phillips returns with a unique and thrilling novel that will leave readers questioning the nature of truth at every turn.

Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711-1085) offers an exciting series of essays by leading scholars in Hispanic Studies. This volume subjects the reality and ideal of Reconquest to a decisive and timely re-examination.

On the Sussex Downs in 1066, the psychotic William and his gang of European mercenaries began the process which fragmented a civilisation. Walt, the last of King Harold's bodyguard, the one who survived Hastings, wanders across Asia Minor in the company of Quint, an intellectual renegade monk. On the way he unfolds the events that led up to the battle which affected the destinies of every English man and woman. With rare skill, Rathbone vividly recreates a civilisation that stubbornly remains alive in the collective memory to this day, and so identifies the roots of the still-held belief that every English person is born free and should stay free. Tender romance, savage war, courtly intrigue and some wry humour combine to make The Last English King an exhilarating roller-coaster ride into our past.

This innovative social and cultural history explores the daily lives of the lowest echelons in president Porfirio Díaz’s army through the decades leading up to the 1910 Revolution. The author shows how life in the barracks—not just combat and drill but also leisure, vice, and intimacy—reveals the basic power relations that made Mexico into a modern society. The Porfirian regime sought to control and direct violence, to impose scientific hygiene and patriotic zeal, and to build an army to rival that of the European powers. The barracks community enacted these objectives in times of war or peace, but never perfectly, and never as expected. The fault lines within the process of creating the ideal army echoed the challenges of constructing an ideal society. This insightful history of life, love, and war in turn-of-the-century Mexico sheds useful light on the troubled state of the Mexican military more than a century later.