A book recommended to me and receiving great reviews. The novel recently shared first place in the 2010 Rainbow Awards Best Historical Fiction category. Available at Amazon.com and Lulu.com
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THE HADRIAN ENIGMA: A Forbidden History A novel - (C) George Gardiner
ISBN13: 978-0-9807469-0-7 (Lulu) ISBN13: 978-0-9807469-1-4 (Amazon)
as a 498-page paperback, also in Kindle & iPad ebook formats
The scene: ancient Rome, 130 years after Christ yet still two centuries before Christian belief is legal. Caesar Hadrian is the popular ruler of a vast pagan Empire at the height of its power and wealth.
Hadrian, one of Rome's "five good emperors", is married yet searches widely for, & eventually finds, the love of his life ... Antinous, an elite Greek athlete, huntsman, & cavalry cadet. They become 'companions' under the ancient Greco-Roman mentoring custom of anerastes & his eromenos.
Later, during an Imperial pleasure tour of Egypt, Antinous is discovered dead in the River Nile. Hadrian is distraught. Is it a drunken prank gone wrong, suicide, murder, or something more sinister?
Hadrian commands the ageing playboy historian Suetonius Tranquillus to investigate. Suetonius is allowed three days to make his report, so he hires a beautiful Syrian courtesan, Surisca of Antioch, to join his investigation as an interpreter & paramour. Their mutual detective work reveals more than Hadrian may want to know, or wants others to know. In the sexually-charged hothouse of court life Hadrian learns how love denied may possess fatal consequences .. for others.
Related Links
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George Gardiner's 'M/M Romance Novels' blog
(right click on external links to keep Pepi open)
George Gardiner's 'M/M Romance Novels' blog
