Here is the haunting drama of Quasimodo, the hunchback; Esmeralda, the gypsy dancer; and Claude Frollo, the priest tortured by his own damnation. Shaped by a profound sense of tragic irony, it is a work that gives full play to the author's brilliant imaginatio

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal. The sixth of January 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event, which thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault...

Paris, 1393. A masquerade ball at the palace ends in tragedy, with four revellers burned to death. Was it an accident, or did someone deliberately hurl a flaming torch at the dancers? Christine de Pizan investigates, and finds the palace to be a hotbed of rumour, suspicion, petty rivalries and dark secrets: a place where no one can be trusted.

A baby abandoned in the palace gardens leads scribe sleuth Christine de Pizan into a mystery involving murder, superstition and scandal in fourteenth-century France.Paris, 1396. Scribe Christine de Pizan is shocked when the Duke of Orléans' fools find a baby, wrapped in rags and covered in sores, abandoned in the palace gardens. Was there really a wicked plan to substitute the child for the queen's own baby daughter and blame the Duchess of Orléans,...