Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Ancient

Imagine sandals on your feet, a sword in your hand and the hot sun beating down on your helmet. Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. Marvel as Atalanta - a woman raised by bears - outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. Discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera. Heroes is the story of what we mortals are truly capable of - at our worst and our very best....

Follow Odysseus after he leaves the fallen city of Troy and takes ten long dramatic years - battling monsters, the temptations of goddesses and suffering the curse of Poseidon - to voyage home to his wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca.

The Greek myths are amongst the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis.

The story of Troy speaks to all of us - the kidnapping of Helen, a queen celebrated for her beauty, sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against the city of Troy, to which they will lay siege for 10 whole and very bloody years. It is Zeus, the king of the gods, who triggers the war when he asks the Trojan prince Paris to judge the fairest goddess of them all. Aphrodite bribes Paris with the heart of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of the Greeks, and naturally, nature takes its course.

Pericles returns home more than a hero: he's the leader of Athens, the empire's beacon of light in the dark. But even during times of peace, the threat of Sparta - Athens's legendary rival - looms large on the horizon. When a sudden catastrophe brings Sparta to its knees, Pericles sees a golden opportunity to forever shift the balance of power in his city's favour. For sometimes, the only way to win lasting peace is to wage war.

In the First Punic War, the Roman legions defeated and humiliated Carthage, their only serious rival for power in the Mediterranean. Now a brilliant young Carthaginian general, called Hannibal, is out for revenge. Caught up in the maelstrom are two young boys, Hanno, the son of a distinguished soldier and confidant of Hannibal, and Quintus, son of a Roman equestrian and landowner. A disastrous adventure will see Hanno sold into slavery and bought by Quintus's father.

Into this fevered forum, a child is born. His mother is Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. But their imperial blood is no protection. The closer you are to the heart of the empire, the closer you are to power, intrigue, and danger. She faces soldiers, senators, rivals, silver-tongued pretenders, each vying for position. One mistake risks exile, incarceration, execution. Or, worst of all, the loss of her infant son.

On the plains of Marathon an army of slaves gathers. Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army - swollen by 10,000 Immortal warriors - have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path stands an army of freeborn Athenians and among them is fearsome and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Knowing defeat means slavery lends keenness to his already sharp blade. Yet people soon forget that freedom is bought with blood.

Years have passed since the clash of shieldwalls echoed across the land. The Saxons are now the lords of Britain. And yet the bards still sing of Arthur - 'In our darkest time, when we need him most, shall he come again.' Yet old Beran has no love of bards' songs. Nor of people, unless they are paying him to steal or kill. He is a mercenary, in the employ of the cutthroat Nabor ap Nabor, and he has been ordered to murder a boy fleeing a burning city. No ordinary boy either. No, this boy is the son of King Constantine and the grandson of High King Ambrosius.

Medea longs for a different life. Since childhood, she has been separated from her sister, shunned by her mother, and persecuted and tormented by her brother and father. All because of a unique and dangerous talent: witchcraft. But when a dashing young hero, Jason, arrives to claim the famed Golden Fleece that her father fiercely protects, Medea sees her opportunity for escape. Her offer to help Jason overcome the trials set by her father sets in motion a journey that will test every ounce of her strength, magic and loyalty.

The news from the north is grim. An army is massing under the new king of Feal. They head towards Darien - city of the Twelve families - demanding allegiance, or war. Tellius, Speaker to the Council, knows this divided city will never stand against such a terrible foe. But Tellius has a plan. He will assemble a band of heroes. Men and women who once before aided Darien in her time of need. They will come if he calls. The army approaches. The trumpets of war sound. A great city holds its breath. And a desperate plan unfolds.

When Cyrus, brother to the Great King of Persia, attempts to overthrow his reckless sibling, he employs a Greek mercenary army of 10,000 soldiers. When this army becomes stranded as a result of the unexpected death of Cyrus and then witnesses the treacherous murder of its entire officer corps, despair overtakes them. One man, Xenophon, rallies the Greeks. As he attempts to lead them to freedom across 1,500 miles of hostile territory seething with adversaries, 10,000 men set off on the long way home.

In Shiang, the young king rules without dissent. Mazer swordsmen stand watch on every corner, looking for the first sign of rebellion. This city is a place of quiet dignity, like a man eating rice with a razor pressed against his throat. Yet with one sharp movement, order is overturned. The balance of centuries is undone in the sudden spill of blood - and in the darkness, something terrible returns to Shiang. Far to the west, four Shiang masters approach the city walls of Darien. The sword saint and his companions have crossed a continent to bring an old man home for punishment.

The great city of Troy is under siege as Greek heroes Achilles and Agamemnon wage bloody war over a stolen woman. In the Greek camp, another woman is watching and waiting: Briseis. She was a queen of this land until Achilles sacked her city and murdered her husband and sons. Now she is Achilles' concubine: a prize of battle. Briseis is just one among thousands of women backstage in this war - the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead - all of them voiceless in history.

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry.

Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea.

You are born to a king, but marry a tyrant. You stand helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore and comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. You play the part, fooling enemies who deny you justice. Slowly, you plot.

After the Gods. After the myths and legends came the world of Men. In their front rank stood Pericles. The Lion of the Golden Age. Experience the epic battlefields of Ancient Greece with master storyteller Conn Iggulden.

Continuing the story of the captured Trojan women as they set sail for Mycenae with the victorious Greeks, this novel centres on the fate of Cassandra -- daughter of King Priam, priestess of Apollo, and a prophet condemned never to be heeded. (When she refuses to have sex with Apollo, after he has kissed her, granting her the gift of true prophecy, he spits in her mouth to make sure she will never be believed.)

You are SEMIRAMIS. You are orphaned and raised on the outskirts of an empire, born into a life of toil and anonymity. But dreams of power and potential course through your veins. You're strong, cunning and quick... and hungry for more. If you want the world to know your name, you will have to chart your path from your village of shadows and dust to the hallowed halls your emperors walk. Legend has it you will rise from nothing to rule kingdoms and command armies. But how far will you go to claim a throne no one promised you? And what are you prepared to sacrifice along the way?