Vespasian Books in Order

This collection gathers the Magnus novellas, following Marcus Salvius Magnus from the rule of Tiberius through Caligula and Claudius to Nero. Gang wars, rigged races and dangerous errands for senators reveal how one street boss shapes Roman history from the shadows.

While crushing revolt in Judaea, Vespasian knows success could draw Nero's jealousy as easily as praise. After the emperor's suicide plunges Rome into civil war, Vespasian and his brother Sabinus must decide whether to stay loyal or risk everything on a bid for the throne.

Rome, AD 51. A murdered astrologer in Magnus's district turns out to have drawn forbidden horoscopes for the powerful, including his own patron. With a rival brotherhood attacking and the authorities closing in, Magnus races to uncover the plot before his world collapses.

As governor of Africa, Vespasian is ordered deep into the desert to free hundreds of Roman captives from a distant kingdom. Finding a slave city on the brink of revolt, he must lead a desperate escape across the sands while Nero's excesses drive Rome toward fire and unrest.

Under Nero, Rome seethes as the emperor plots to rid himself of his wife and mother while spending the empire into crisis. Sent to Londinium to steady the finances, Vespasian is swept up in Boudicca's revolt and a province that could take half the empire down with it.

Rome, AD 51. After eight years of war in Britannia, Vespasian delivers the defeated Caratacus to Emperor Claudius, only to see Agrippina grant the rebel a pardon. Dispatched east to Armenia, he is caught between rival freedmen, a rising religious movement and a mission that may be designed to kill him.

In Britannia, AD 45, druids capture Vespasian's brother Sabinus and plan to sacrifice both Flavian brothers beneath ancient stones. Vespasian must fight through rebellion and eerie native religion to save him, while in Rome Messalina falls and Claudius's freedmen gamble on a new empress.

After Caligula's murder, Claudius takes the throne and needs a swift, symbolic victory to secure it. Vespasian and his brother Sabinus are sent to recover the lost eagle of the Seventeenth Legion in the German forests, a quest dogged by ambush, sabotage and the first moves toward invading Britannia.

Serving on the fringes of empire, Vespasian is recalled to a Rome now ruled by Caligula, whose grip on reality frays by the day. When the emperor demands Alexander the Great's breastplate from Alexandria, Vespasian is sent on a dangerous theft that could cost him his career and his life.

At sixteen, Vespasian leaves his Sabine farm for Rome, hoping to find a patron and join the legions. Instead he walks into Sejanus's terror ridden city, stumbles into conspiracy and is driven to a frontier legion where rebellion and political assassins follow him into battle.

Posted in Thracia, Vespasian is tasked with extracting an old enemy from a besieged fortress before the legions storm it. The prisoner could destroy Sejanus, but the mission drags Vespasian from mountain ambushes to Tiberius's paranoid court, where a single mistake means execution.