Author of Historical Thrillers. Unlikeable Heroine.
Coming 3 July 2019
Two empires on the brink of war.
A spy who is sick of being invisible.
A code that could break them all.
The Very Wolf is my debut novel, a thriller about the women spies of the Ancient World.
In 89 BC, the world is on the brink of war. In the West, the corrupt Republic of Rome is collapsing. On the shores of the Black Sea, the brilliant but ruthless King of Pontos sees his chance to restore the Greek and Persian Empires his ancestors ruled.
When one of his spies, Makaria Kotyou, finds a mysterious code on the body of an informant she coerces the disgraced aristocrat and mathematician Datames Moaphernides into helping decipher it. When the code turns out not to be a message but a piece of music, their search for a Roman infiltrator becomes a journey through the Pontian capital’s mansions as well as its backstreets and brothels.
If they succeed, they will turn the war in Pontos’ favour and restore their own tattered reputations. If they fail, the kingdom will face ruin, and they will unleash violence beyond control.
Set in a time of dazzling discoveries, sumptuous art and brutal conflict, this intricately plotted thriller brings to life a lost empire that was once Rome’s greatest rival. Datames’ and Makaria’s stories are a fight to control the truth itself – how we see the world and who we think we are.
Read the beginning
Download the first three chapters of The Very Wolf and read for free.
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Welcome To Pontos
Do you want to know more about the world in which my story is set? Would you like to read about the real people, places and artifacts that inspired The Very Wolf? Or perhaps about how I write historical fiction?
You can find all this and a bibliography of original and modern sources on my blog page.