For anyone who's interested, I've bought 'Empire: Wounds of Honour' by Anthony Riches and 'The Rapture' by Liz Jensen. Managed to resist buying the new Philip Pullman book, although I'm bound to buy it the first time I see a paperback version.
The Empire: Wounds of Freedom
Was inspired to buy this by finding I had no Roman historical novels to read during the relevant GoodReads Historical BookClub theme.
Marcus Valerius Aquila has scarcely landed in Britannia when he has to run for his life- condemned to dishonourable death by power-crazed Emperor Commodus. Desperate, the Praetorian Guard officer agrees to take a new name, serve in an obscure regiment on Hadrian's Wall and lie low until he can hope for justice.
Then a rebel army sweeps down from the wastes North of the Wall, and Marcus has to prove he's hard enough to lead a century in the front line of a brutal war with a merciless enemy.
The Rapture
A review of this book came up on my Google Reader choices and it sounded interesting so I put it on my BookCrossing wishlist. When I saw it at Tesco's I just couldn't resist!
In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall- violent, delusional and insistant that she can foresee natural disasters- she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. When catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany predicted, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply.
A haunting story of human passion and burning faith, The Rapture, is an electrifying pyschological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in the world on the brink.
