Boudica: Dreaming The Hound - Tapa dura

AD 57: much of Britannia has been under Roman occupation for over ten years, with key areas in the south and east administered as vassal states, where the tribes pay costly tithes to the Emperor in return for the right to continue living on their own lands. On the sacred isle of Mona, the Boudica or Bringer of Victory as Breaca has long been hailed, now knows for certain that her lover, Caradoc - betrayed, captured and kept hostage in Rome - will never return to her. She decides to leave Mona where she and her warriors have been waging a guerilla war, and to take the fight to the Eceni heartland where it is needed most. With her are her children, Cunomar and Grainne, and her best friend from childhood, ex-lover and dreamer, Airmid. But the once proud Eceni are a downtrodden and defeated people who are forbidden on pain of death to worship their old gods, and who now scrape a living from the once fertile land. Across the sea in Hibernia, Breaca's half-brother Ban, is struggling to make peace with his fractured past. Soon, provoked by Roman aggression, he will sail to Britain to protect Mona, and from there he will go to Camulodinum, where once more united, he and Breaca will face down the might of Rome in the bloodiest revolt the western world has ever known.

Manda Scott is a veterinary surgeon, writer and climber. Born and educated in Scotland, she now lives in Suffolk with two lurchers and too many cats. Known primarily as a crime writer, her first novel, Hen's Teeth was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her subsequent novels are Night Mares, Stronger than Death and No Good Deed, for which she was hailed by the Times as 'one of Britain's most important crime writers'. Dreaming the Eagle, the first book in the Boudica series, is also available in Bantam paperback