Medieval mystery for people who laugh starts here.... England's most famous date 1066: At the monastery of De'Ath's Dingle, during a completely pointless theological debate, there is a mysterious death. Routine business for the average investigative medieval monk. Unfortunately, this isn’t a tale of average monks. Anyone who would put the idiot Brother Simon in charge of a murder investigation is either one chant short of a plainsong or is up to something. When Brother Hermitage, innocent in every way, including bystanding, is lined up for execution, he begins to wonder if something might be going on. Perhaps his new companion Wat, weaver of pornographic tapestry, can figure out what it is. Before it's too late. If you are a lover of the historical detective genre, if you have a deep respect for the worlds created, don’t read this book. It’ll only upset you. Now available in a massive box set with The Garderobe of Death and The Tapestry of Death; for those with a lever-arch Kindle. People have commented on the whole sorry business: 5* Such a good writer, it's a whole new slant on medieval mystery. The truth is out there, sort of! Always makes me laugh, love these books, love this author. More please as soon as possible, just keep writing... 5* Like Cadfael meets Clouseau. 5* The usual mayhem, confusion, murder and laughs! 5* Always makes me laugh, love these books, love this author. 1* Stupid! Be warned, there are now 31 Chronicles of Brother Hermitage

Medieval mystery the Howard of Warwick way; funny! Now also a book. Available where all good books gather together. England 1067: Henri de Turold, King William's favourite hunting companion has been murdered. How anyone actually did it, given the remarkably personal nature of the fatal wound, is a bit of a mystery. Lord Robert Grosmal, of disordered mind, disordered castle and Henri's host at the time, knows that King William gets very tetchy when his friends are murdered. He sends to the nearby monastery of De'Ath's Dingle for a monk to investigate. Medieval monks are usually good at this sort of thing. Brother Hermitage is a medieval monk but he's not very good at this sort of thing. Motivated by the point of a sword he and his companion Wat the weaver set off to solve the crime. Oh, by the way King William is arriving that night so they better get a move on. Brother Hermitage's second criminal investigation reveals many things. Improvement is not among them. If you are looking for a poignant evocation of the medieval world, an insightful exploration of the characters of the time, buy a different book. Ellis Peters is quite good. After this debacle he even has another go in The Tapestry of Death. Out now on Kindle What has been said of "The Heretics of Death" 'I laughed 'till I cried,' 5* 'medieval hysterical mystery – must read!' 5* 'buy this book. It is cheap and it will make you laugh ' 5* 'I don't think I'm the target audience,' 1* 'Hermitage you're an idiot' Prior Athan of De'ath's Dingle.

“A tour de force . . . [Storr’s] dogged approach to nailing many of the most celebrated skeptics in lies and misrepresentations is welcome.” —Salon Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world—from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides—meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. Storr tours Holocaust sites with famed denier David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during “past life regression” hypnosis, discusses the looming One World Government with an iconic climate skeptic, and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult. Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological “hero maker” inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship and science denial. “The subtle brilliance of The Unpersuadables is Mr. Storr’s style of letting his subjects hang themselves with their own words.” —The Wall Street Journal “Throws new and salutary light on all our conceits and beliefs. Very valuable, and a great read to boot, this is investigative journalism of the highest order.” —The Independent, Book of the Week

Burning Bodies interrogates the ideas that the authors of historical and theological texts in the medieval West associated with the burning alive of Christian heretics. Michael Barbezat traces these instances from the eleventh century until the advent of the internal crusades of the thirteenth century, depicting the exclusionary fires of hell and judicial execution, the purifying fire of post-mortem purgation, and the unifying fire of God's love that medieval authors used to describe processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Burning Bodies analyses how the accounts of burning heretics alive referenced, affirmed, and elaborated upon wider discourses of community and eschatology. Descriptions of burning supposed heretics alive were profoundly related to ideas of a redemptive Christian community based upon a divine, unifying love, and medieval understandings of what these burnings could have meant to contemporaries cannot be fully appreciated outside of this discourse of communal love. For them, human communities were bodies on fire. Medieval theologians and academics often described the corporate identity of the Christian world as a body joined together by the love of God. This love was like a fire, melting individuals together into one whole. Those who did not spiritually burn with God's love were destined to burn literally in the fires of Hell or Purgatory, and the fires of execution were often described as an earthly extension of these fires. Through this analysis, Barbezat demonstrates how presentations of heresy, and to some extent actual responses to perceived heretics, were shaped by long-standing images of biblical commentary and exegesis. He finds that this imagery is more than a literary curiosity; it is, in fact, a formative historical agent.

In this exciting sequel to "The Archer's Tale" and "Vagabond," the "New York Times" bestselling author concludes his tale of an epic quest for vengeance and the greatest prize in all history: the Holy Grail.

In her sixteenth chronicle of the medieval monk-detective Brother Cadfael, Ellis Peters throws a variety of puzzles at her hero. In the summer of 1143, Brother Cadfael is torn from his herbarium to investigate the deaths of two visitors.