Thomas B Costain Books in Order

A young English scholar abandons his quiet life to join a pirate ship and sails into the hazardous world of seventeenth century privateering. Fighting beside the legendary buccaneer John Ward, he discovers both the lure of Spanish gold and the cost of loyalty.

Set during the Napoleonic wars, this novel follows Francis Ellery, a London newspaper owner who campaigns against invasion while falling for French exile Gabrielle de Salle. As he becomes a war correspondent from Portugal to Russia, public duty and private passion collide.

In thirteenth century England, Walter of Gurnie, the illegitimate son of a nobleman, flees Oxford after a riot and sets out for distant Cathay with his friend Tristram. Their journey through Mongol ruled Asia brings them wealth, love, and a dangerous new understanding of power.

This New France saga focuses on the Le Moyne family of Montreal, whose sons push down the Mississippi and help found the city of New Orleans. Against wars, intrigue, and swamps, Costain follows their ambitions, rivalries, and sacrifices as they try to build a continental empire.

Set in fifteenth century France, this novel follows Jacques Coeur, the brilliant merchant who finances King Charles VII while navigating court intrigue. Around him swirl Lady Agnes Sorel, the orphan Valerie, and plots that entangle love, loyalty, and the vast sums needed to drive out the English.

First in Costain's Plantagenet history, this volume follows England from William the Conqueror's 1066 invasion through the troubled reign of King John. It highlights quarrels, reforms, and rebellions as Norman rule hardens into a distinct English kingdom.

This second Plantagenet volume centers on Henry III, whose long reign mixed political blunders with remarkable growth in art, architecture, and learning. Costain shows how baronial revolt and new institutions began reshaping royal power in thirteenth century England.

A six year old boy named Ludar Prentice arrives alone in 1890s Ontario with a note pinned to his coat sending him to a father no one seems to know. Taken in by townspeople, he grows up determined to uncover his past and earn his own place in Balfour.

Set in the first century after the death of Jesus, this novel follows Basil, a gifted young artisan enslaved and later freed for his skill in silver. Commissioned to create an ornate casing for the cup used at the Last Supper, he must seek out apostles and believers while dodging persecution and spiritual doubt.

Costain's history of the French regime in Canada follows explorers, missionaries, traders, and settlers as they push along the St Lawrence and into the wilderness. It blends vivid episodes with careful research to show how New France took shape and ultimately fell.

Beginning on the day of Waterloo and stretching to the end of the nineteenth century, this two volume saga traces three intertwined families bound by a high stakes tontine. As fortunes rise and fall, the shrinking pool of beneficiaries turns inheritance into obsession.

Framed by a modern senator's strange claim of having lived before, the heart of this story lies in twelfth and thirteenth century England. There, dispossessed knight Richard of Rawan serves under King John and witnesses the unrest that will force the barons' charter at Runnymede.

Covering the reigns of Edward I, II, and III, this book moves from campaigns in Wales and Scotland to the opening phases of the Hundred Years War. It links battlefield victories and disasters to changing life for nobles, soldiers, and commoners.

Against the backdrop of Attila the Hun's invasion of Europe, a fair haired girl and a black stallion are drawn into a sweeping conflict between Rome and the steppe. Costain uses their journey to explore loyalty, fear, and hope in a world on the edge of collapse.

Written for younger readers, this biography recounts William of Normandy's rise from embattled duke to victor at Hastings and king of England. Costain emphasizes both the brutal side of conquest and the political skill needed to hold a sullen new kingdom together.

Here Costain tells the story of England between 1377 and 1485, when peasants' uprisings, court intrigues, and the Wars of the Roses shattered Plantagenet rule. He closes with a close look at Richard III and the unresolved mystery of the princes in the Tower.

In this biographical narrative, Costain focuses on the years when Alexander Graham Bell moved with his family to Brantford, Ontario and pursued his experiments with sound. The book follows Bell's work with the deaf and the chain of inspirations that led to the first practical telephone.

On the remote island of St Helena, the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte befriends spirited English teenager Betsy Balcombe while Longwood House is prepared for him. Their sharp, often funny conversations reveal the fallen emperor as a complex, lonely man facing the closing chapters of his life.

This earlier version of Costain's first Plantagenet history traces the same ground later covered in The Conquering Family. Beginning with William the Conqueror in 1066 and ending with King John in 1216, it presents the Norman kings as a force that reshaped England.