"Collum, a brilliantly gifted young knight from the provinces, arrives at Camelot two weeks after the Battle of Camlann, hoping to compete for a spot on the Round Table. But he finds the city empty, King Arthur dead, and the Table destroyed. The remaining six knights aren't the mighty heroes, the legends, like Lancelot and Gawain and Tristram and Galahad. These are the survivors, a grab-bag of minor oddball knights from the margins--Sir Palomides,...

Shortly after Arthur and his counselor Malgwyn ap Cuneglas arrive in King Doged's kingdom to broker a deal between warring tribes, Doged is murdered. His young wife, defenseless and alone, appeals to Arthur to find her husband's killer. Arthur quickly agrees and Malgwyn is given this almost impossible task. Why would Arthur be so interested in helping keep this small region stable and under the High King influence?

A penniless young knight with few prospects, William Marshal is plucked from obscurity when he saves the life of Henry II's formidable queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In gratitude, she appoints him tutor to the heir to the throne, the volatile and fickle Prince Henry. But being a royal favorite brings its share of danger and jealousy as well as fame and reward. A writer of uncommon historical integrity and accuracy, Elizabeth Chadwick resurrects the...

The first book John Steinbeck read as a child was the Caxton Morte d'Arthur, and he considered it one of the most challenging tasks of his career to modernize the stories of King Arthur. "These stories are alive even in those of us who have not read them," he says. "And, in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the words and the stately rhythms of [Thomas] Malory. I wanted to set the stories down in meaning as they were written, leaving out nothing...