Here are 70 books that All Things Are Lights fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have always been passionate about history–especially military history, and have collected books since I was a child. In time, I became particularly absorbed with the medieval world, building up a comprehensive library of books on all aspects of life during this fascinating time. In my research, I have traveled to all of the locations mentioned in the book: East Anglia, Bremen, Lübeck, and Latvia. I particularly love trying to bring the characters to life, fitting them, and creating an interesting plot around actual historical events.
I have always been fascinated by medieval history, but I became interested in this particular era after reading this book and learning about the German Order of Swordbrothers (Schwertbrüderorden).
What intrigued me was that they were a small Order, not very pious or saintly. They were unorthodox and argued constantly with Bishop Albert, the leader of the Christian mission. They were a rough and ready lot, acting more like brigands than warrior monks. One of the brothers murdered the first master, and they locked up their second master when he tried to exert more control over their behavior. Over time, they were accused of almost every crime.
I loved Christiansen’s book, which opened a new world of discovery. He writes in a witty, easy-to-read style that hooked me from the beginning.
The 'Northern Crusades', inspired by the Pope's call for a Holy War, are less celebrated than those in the Middle East, but they were also more successful: vast new territories became and remain Christian, such as Finland, Estonia and Prussia. Newly revised in the light of the recent developments in Baltic and Northern medieval research, this authoritative overview provides a balanced and compelling account of a tumultuous era.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have always been passionate about history–especially military history, and have collected books since I was a child. In time, I became particularly absorbed with the medieval world, building up a comprehensive library of books on all aspects of life during this fascinating time. In my research, I have traveled to all of the locations mentioned in the book: East Anglia, Bremen, Lübeck, and Latvia. I particularly love trying to bring the characters to life, fitting them, and creating an interesting plot around actual historical events.
This is an action-packed book that tells the story of Ferdia, an Irish noble, who is held as a hostage in Wales to ensure the good behavior of his father. He faces relentless bullying and persecution before saving the life of King Richard III and entering his court, where he becomes the king’s squire. The action continues in France as Richard attempts to put down a rebellion, but the larger threat to Ferdia himself turns out to be a member of King Richard’s own family.
The book has all the ingredients of an epic historical adventure, with thrilling action, relentless battles, and intrigue. I particularly enjoyed Kane’s vivid description of the 12th-century world and the authentic period details. The series continues with Crusader and King.
1179. Henry II is King of England, Wales, Ireland, Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine. The House of Plantagenet reigns supreme.
But there is unrest in Henry's house. Not for the first time, his family talks of rebellion.
Ferdia - an Irish nobleman taken captive during the conquest of his homeland - saves the life of Richard, the king's son. In reward for his bravery, he is made squire to Richard, who is already a renowned warrior.
Crossing the English Channel, the two are plunged into a campaign to crush rebels in Aquitaine. The bloody battles and gruelling…
I have always been passionate about history–especially military history, and have collected books since I was a child. In time, I became particularly absorbed with the medieval world, building up a comprehensive library of books on all aspects of life during this fascinating time. In my research, I have traveled to all of the locations mentioned in the book: East Anglia, Bremen, Lübeck, and Latvia. I particularly love trying to bring the characters to life, fitting them, and creating an interesting plot around actual historical events.
Although this book is quite old now–I think it was published in 2006/2007, it helped ignite my interest in the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Knights Templer in particular. The novel begins in 1260, and Robyn Young does a good job of setting the scene through the dual narrative with Will Campbell, a young, troubled sergeant in the Knights Templer on one side–and the Mamluk Amir Baybars in Outremer on the other.
Set after the actual Crusades, the setting moves between England, France, and the Holy Land and is packed with action and subterfuge. The series continues with Crusade and Requiem. I enjoyed the accounts of daily life and the attention to historical detail, as well as the fast-paced action. It is a must-read for anyone interested in medieval life and the Knights Templer.
The epic first novel in the million-selling Brethren trilogy. In the tradition of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden and Manda Scott, Brethren brilliantly evokes that extraordinary clash of civilizations known in the West as the Crusades.
From the burning plains of Syria to the filthy backstreets of Paris and London, Brethren is the story of Will Campbell, coming of age in a time of conspiracy, passion, politics and war.
Will longs to become a Knight Templar, but first he must serve as an apprentice to the foul-tempered scholar Everard, a man of dangerous secrets.
Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.
In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart Rowdy…
I have always been passionate about history–especially military history, and have collected books since I was a child. In time, I became particularly absorbed with the medieval world, building up a comprehensive library of books on all aspects of life during this fascinating time. In my research, I have traveled to all of the locations mentioned in the book: East Anglia, Bremen, Lübeck, and Latvia. I particularly love trying to bring the characters to life, fitting them, and creating an interesting plot around actual historical events.
William Urban is an American history professor who specializes in the Baltic Crusades. He is probably the pre-eminent English-speaking historian on this subject and has written many other books–mostly on this theme or the Teutonic Knights. I particularly enjoy his no-nonsense writing style. The book has proven invaluable in my own research as it just concentrates on the Crusade in Livonia and Estonia in the first half of the 13th century–as well as showing the other political events taking place in Germany at the time.
Urban was a great help to my own book. He kindly read an earlier draft of Sword Brethren and gave me some crucial historical advice. He has also agreed to read the next book in the series early in 2025, and I await his opinion with anticipation.
Working as a social anthropologist in Uganda, Ghana, Malaysia, and Catalonia, I became fascinated by villages as microcosms of broader social change, places where history can be observed in the making through the lives and histories of families and of their members. Villages are anything but ‘natural’ communities or social backwaters. They survive (or perish) because people, beliefs, and goods are continually moving in and out. Village lives are certainly shaped by state and society, but the impact goes both ways. Each of my selected books tells a gripping and distinctive story of villagers grappling with social and cultural tension, the forces of change, and the challenges of survival.
An instant best-seller when it first appeared in 1978, Montaillou uses Inquisition records of the cross-examinations of Cathar heretics and their Catholic neighbours and kin to recover the religious, social, emotional and sexual lives of medieval Pyrenean villagers.
Shepherds, mayors, matriarchs and servants, priests and laity, come vividly to life as they recount their work and pleasures, friendships and enmities, doubts and beliefs.
Montaillouis the most influential example of what was then a speciality of the French Annalesschool of history, namely, studies of everyday life (la vie quotidienne) in a particular historical milieu.
Since then micro-histories, detailed accounts of social microcosms and what they tell us about the wider worlds in which they were embedded, and the historical shifts or transformations to which they bear witness, have become the bread and butter not only of local but of global historians.
APPEARS UNREAD. Hardcover with slipcase. Slipcase shows minimal shelving wear, binding is very slightly pulling away from the spine, otherwise an UNBLEMISHED copy.
I am an award-winning and USA Today bestselling South African author, social anthropologist, and transformational life coach. Human transformation and the question of human social nature are key themes in all of my writing, which explores the experiences of people on the margins or with a background of overlapping cultures. I am a book dragon who loves reading adventures in almost every genre and that broad scope of my reading explorations has wormed its way into my writing style which, though broadly defined as fantasy, encompasses elements from other styles in a rich and ‘aromatic’ blend.
I love all of Kay’s works, and yet this one maintains a very special place in my heart because it’s set in a fantasy realm steeped in Medieval vibes. Following in the tradition of the first fantasy books, and also the older tradition of the first romances, this book overflows with songs and poetry that bring the culture of this world to life in a way unlike any other. The nostalgia in this book hit me very hard the first time I read it and it definitely took me back to Arthurian legends and Medieval romances.
From the critically-acclaimed author of The Fionavar Tapestry comes an epic fantasy novel of love, both courtly and forbidden, and two kingdoms endlessly opposed...
Blaise of Gorhaut is a warrior. He fought for his king and country, until the king died with an arrow in his eye at the battle of Iersen Bridge, and a dishonorable treaty ceded a good part of his country to foreign hands. He has broken relations with his father, adviser to the king of Gorhaut, and abandoned the use of his family name.
Now, Blaise is a mercenary. He never expected to work for…
Papyrologist Lisa Emmer's world flips when the Sûreté detains her at her Metro station with news of the savage murder of the esteemed Paris historian Dr. Raimond Foix, her friend and mentor in the study of ancient documents.
Horrified, Lisa finds clues at the crime scene left behind for her…
My passion for ‘Escapes and Returns to an Uncertain Future’ started in the summer when I left my parents to go for a holiday to Spain, along with three boyfriends of my age, 18 years old. And this passion continued until I returned 3 months later, it even continued back at home. Because now I knew how good it is to escape, I knew that escapes would pop up again, and in unforeseen directions. And so will happy returns! The two moods are only the two sides of the same pulsation called life. In reading good books, in experiencing adventures, I rediscover the details of specific escapes and particular returns.
I chose this book as an easy leisure read for a holiday in Greece, and I fell in enduring love with it. Umberto Eco is not only the master of the theory of sign systems (semiotics) but also able to escape from the dry plains of scientific conclusions to the rich landscapes of historical narratives.
In this book, he shows us that Europe’s early development has not just been the linearly ascending advance from ancient Greece, via the Roman Empire, to the Renaissance. The narrator he invented for his book lets us return to the many threats from which the Middle Ages in Europe could emerge.
I started reading it as an entertaining storytelling book, but in the middle of this adventure, I realized how deeply into scientific thought Eco, the specialist in medieval studies, had abducted me.
An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention.
It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.
In my college days, I majored in dance and political science. It was the 1960s, so marrying art with politics made countercultural sense. After realizing I wouldn’t become the next Martha Graham, I chose to pursue a doctoral degree in political science. But I never abandoned my first love, the arts. Following a more than twenty-year career teaching about women and politics at several universities, I returned to school myself, completed an M.F.A. in creative writing, and published my debut novel, Cities of Women.
Readers may be familiar with The Arabian Nights, the source material behind this fascinating novel. Yet, what distinguishes Jamila Ahmed’s retelling is her focus on the famed storyteller, Shaherazade, whose exposure of the Seljuk king’s wife’s infidelity sets in motion a violent chain of events in twelfth-century Persia.
In lush, sensuous prose, Ahmed fills this vividly imagined, action-packed novel with compelling characters and labyrinthine tales within tales populated with mythical adventurers and creatures with magical powers.
The elaborate, psychologically complex portrait of Shaherazade at the heart of the novel celebrates the power of storytelling while paying homage to the agency of the storyteller.
In this riveting take on One Thousand and One Nights, Shaherazade, at the center of her own story, uses wit and political mastery to navigate opulent palaces brimming with treachery and the perils of the Third Crusade as her Persian homeland teeters on the brink of destruction.
In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, she sets the Seljuk Empire on fire.
I was fated to become a crusade historian. Research for my doctoral dissertation on medieval relations between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople inevitably led me to the Fourth Crusade. I was hooked, and for the past fifty-plus years the crusades have been a passion—I hope a healthy one. Although I have published two books on the Fourth Crusade, my crusading interests have now gone global, and I am currently studying sixteenth-century crusading in the eastern Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, Ethiopia, and the Americas. Perhaps someday I shall turn to more modern crusades. Sad to say, the crusades are still with us.
There are numerous excellent books of every length (one runs more than 900 pages) that survey the crusades across the centuries and in their multiple theaters of operation. And several books are more recent, but this little book of fewer than two hundred pages is a gem. Written in clear prose and incorporating biographies of important individuals, key documents, and a glossary, it is tailor-made for students and general readers, and its price is modest.
In addition to a clear, engaging survey of the Christian crusades to the Holy Lands, this book offers an overview of the many contemporary campaigns against non-Christians throughout Europe and the Middle East. Seventeen biographical sketches of key figures and a dozen primary texts in translation are included, as are six maps and an annotated bibliography and chronology.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I was fated to become a crusade historian. Research for my doctoral dissertation on medieval relations between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople inevitably led me to the Fourth Crusade. I was hooked, and for the past fifty-plus years the crusades have been a passion—I hope a healthy one. Although I have published two books on the Fourth Crusade, my crusading interests have now gone global, and I am currently studying sixteenth-century crusading in the eastern Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, Ethiopia, and the Americas. Perhaps someday I shall turn to more modern crusades. Sad to say, the crusades are still with us.
Hillenbrand does for counter-crusading Islam what Tyerman does for crusading Latin Christianity. This book is chock full of images of objects illustrating the rich variety of cultures embraced by medieval Islam. But beyond that, it is the single best book in English on Islam in the Age of the Crusades. Topics covered in detail, but always in a reader-friendly style, range from Muslim ethnic and religious stereotypes of Westerners to the evolution of jihad as a principle and a reality before and during the crusading era. No serious student of the crusades should overlook this important contribution to crusade studies.
