The Course of Honor by Lindsey Davis

The Course of Honor by Lindsey Davis

In ancient Rome, ambitious citizens who aspired to political power, to become one of the ruling elite--a senator, had to follow what was known as The Course of Honor. This course had only one unbreakable rule: a senator is forbidden to marry a slave, even a freed slave. When the soldier Vespasian meets an interesting girl in the imperial palace, he doesn't know she is a slave in the household of the imperial family. But he is inexorably drawn in by her intelligence and charisma. Yet as Vespasian slowly rises from near-obscurity and as emperor after emperor plays out their own deadly, seductive games of lust and conquest, the future is something no one could imagine. No one could believe that a country-born army man might win the throne--no one, that is, except a slave girl who, with the future Emperor, begins a daring course of honor of her own.

Lindsey Davis is an English actress who was born and raised in Birmingham. She ran away to be a writer after earning an English degree at Oxford and working for the civil service for thirteen years. Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars, Nemesis, and Alexandria are among her worldwide bestselling novels featuring ancient Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco. She also wrote Rebels and Traitors, a historical novel set during the English Civil War. Davis has been honored with the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association, as well as the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.