Pawn in Frankincense: Book Four in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles

Product Description

Combining all the political intrigue of
Game of Thrones with the sweeping romanticism of
Outlander, Dorothy Dunnett’s legendary Lymond Chronicles have enthralled readers for decades and amassed legions of devoted fans. In this fourth book in the series, Francis Crawford of Lymond embarks on a desperate and deadly journey in search of his kidnapped child.
 
Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman Empire, a little boy is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan. At stake is the political order of three continents, for Lymond’s child is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder. In the game’s final move, which is played inside the harem of the Topkapi palace, Lymond will come face to face with his most implacable enemy, and the dreadful ambiguities of his own nature.

Review

“Exciting, dangerous, fascinating.”

—
The Boston Globe
“[Dunnett’s] hero. . .is as polished and perceptive as Lord Peter Wimsey and as resourceful as James Bond.”

—
The New York Times Book Review
“Vivid, engaging, densely plotted. . . . Dunnett is a master of suspense and misdirection.”

—
The New York Times“A masterpiece of historical fiction.”

—
The Washington Post “[Lymond] is arguably the perfect romantic hero.”
—The Guardian “Dorothy Dunnett is one of the greatest talespinners since Dumas . . . breathlessly exciting.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Dunnett is a name to conjure with. Her work exemplifies the best the genre can offer.”
—Christian Science Monitor “Ingenious and exceptional . . . its effect brilliant, its pace swift and colorful and its multi-linear plot spirited and absorbing.”
—Boston Herald “Dunnett evokes the sixteenth century with an amazing richness of allusion and scholarship, while keeping a firm control on an intricately twisting narrative. She has another more unusual quality . . . an ability to check her imagination with irony, to mix high romance with wit.”
—Sunday Times
(London)
“A very stylish blend of high romance and high camp. Her hero, the enigmatic Lymond, [is] Byron crossed with Lawrence of Arabia. . . . He moves in an aura of intrigue, hidden menace and sheer physical daring.”
—Times Literary Supplement
(London)
“With shrewd psychological insight and a rare gift of narrative and descriptive power, Dorothy Dunnett reveals the color, wit, lushness . . . and turbulent intensity of one of Europe’s greatest eras.”
—Raleigh News and Observer

About the Author

DOROTHY DUNNETT was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries; 
King Hereafter, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of 
The Scottish Highlands, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature. Lady Dunnett died in 2001.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Baden

The bathers of Baden in summer were few and fat. Winter was the best season, when everyone came home from the fighting, and the baths public and private were filled with magnificent men, their bodies inscribed with the robust holograph of the sword.

The pretty girls came also in winter; the unmarried with their maids and their chaperones: the matrons bright-eyed and dutiful; eager to furnish their lords with an heir.

The rule was mixed bathing. The great officers of the Church went in winter, smoothing off in the sulphurous water the ills of a summer’s rich feeding; and rested afterwards sweating in bed, the warm bladders under their armpits, dreaming of Calvin. Noblemen from the Italian States and the Holy Roman Empire; from the France of Henri II and the uneasy England of Edward VI came