Legends of the Wolves Books

In this new historical romantic fantasy of stunning originality and scope, Alice Borchardt breathes life into a bygone age, brilliantly recreating a sensuous, violent world--and the men and women whose grand ambitions, betrayals, and passions shape the era in which they live and die. Decadent Rome at the dawn of the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur. Now, into the Eternal City comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman distantly related, through her dead mother, to Charlemagne. Regeane's regal blood renders her an unwilling pawn in the struggle for political power. But unknown to those plotting against her, the blood she has inherited from her murdered father makes her much more than a child of royalty. Possessed of preternatural agility and strength, primal memories extending back thousands of years, and senses so keen they can pierce the veil of death itself, Regeane is a shapeshifter: woman and wolf, hunter and hunted. Betrothed by Charlemagne's command to a barbarian lord she has never seen, Regeane is surrounded by enemies. The most notorious, her depraved uncle and guardian, will not scruple to betray her to the Church unless she aids him in his sinister schemes. And if the Church discovers her secret, Regeane will burn at the stake. Yet Regeane finds allies as well: Lucilla, rumored to be the private courtesan of Pope Hadrian himself; Antonius, a wise and gentle soul trapped within a body grotesquely disfigured by disease; and the little Saxon girl Elfgifa, brave beyond her years, with a tongue as sharp as a blade. Outside the gates of Rome, baying on the moonlit expanses of the Campagna, there is a mysterious dark wolf whose scent makes the animal in Regeane tremble with desire. Now, as an infamous stranger prepares to claim his bride, deadly plots and counter plots tighten like a noose around her neck, Regeane must fight to live with dignity as the proud creature she is: civilized and savage, woman and wolf, partaking of both yet infinitely more than either . . . Lyrical, fast-paced, sensual, and rich with historical detail and deep insights into the heart, The Silver Wolf catapults Alice Borchardt squarely into the front rank of contemporary women writers. Her intricate plot and hypnotic voice will cast a spell that few will be able to resist.

The Silver Wolf , Alice Borchardt's acclaimed novel of a shapeshifter's struggle to survive as woman and wolf amid the Dark Ages, announced the arrival of a ferociously gifted writer. Now, with her masterful weaving of adventure, history, and magic, Borchardt delves deeper into the shape-shifter legend, and brings an earlier, more savage time brilliantly to life. The fearsome legions of Julius Caesar have crushed resistance to Roman rule. The power of the druids is broken; the shattered tribes retreating to the dubious safety of the high mountains or fleeing north into lands as inhospitable as those left behind. Watching all the while through yellow eyes afire with curiosity and intelligence is Maeniel, a gray wolf . . . who is also a man. This is not the Maeniel of The Silver Wolf . Not the mature shapeshifter, secure in his dual nature, whose hard-won wisdom is the equal of his preternatural strength and passion. That Maeniel will not exist for another eight hundred years. Now he is a stranger to his human half, his reason chained to instinct. Yet as the ancient civilization of the Gallic tribes is systematically destroyed around him, a new Maeniel is about to be born from the ruins. It begins with a woman. She is Imona: young, proud, beautiful. The sight of her fills Maeniel with unfamiliar feelings and desires, triggering his transformation from wolf to man. In her arms he learns for the first time what it means to love. It is a knowledge that will change him forever. For when Imona vanishes following a Roman massacre, Maeniel begins to learn a very different lesson. Following Imona's trail as wolf and man, Maeniel is himself pursued by a warrior woman sworn to kill him. She is Dryas, a queen without a kingdom. But the two adversaries will prove to have much in common. And the hunt upon which they embark will lead them farther than they can imagine: to the gates of Rome itself. To the gates of their very souls . . . With Night of the Wolf ,  Alice Borchardt has given us another triumph of soaring imagination and adventure. By turns lyrical, sensuous, and violent, hers is a vision of the past that will stir both heart and mind. Her writing will possess you like a fever . . . and haunt you like a voluptuous dream.

In The Silver Wolf, Alice Borchardt brought the brutality and decadent splendor of Dark Ages Rome brilliantly to life in the remarkable tale of Regeane, a beautiful young shapeshifter fighting to live and love as both woman and wolf. Night of the Wolf looked back even further in time, to the days of Julius Caesar, when a woman's beauty bewitched a wolf—and awakened the man who had been slumbering for millennia in the beast's savage heart . . . a man named Maeniel, who would become Regeane's soul mate. Now Borchardt takes the saga of these two extraordinary lovers to dazzling new heights of the imagination. The result is a novel of which the pages ring with magic, romance, and adventure—an irresistible call to everything wild within us. The armies of Charlemagne are poised in Geneva, ready to add Italy to their lord's growing list of conquests. On the other side of the Alps, the mercenary forces of the corrupt King Desiderus watch the mountain passes like cats crouched impatiently before the holes of mice. Lying between the two camps is a wild and forbidding land where shapeshifters live unmolested, protected by their leader, Maeniel, and his bride, Regeane. But now the wars of men threaten to undo the careful work of centuries. The human part of Maeniel owes fealty to Charlemagne. But the wolf acknowledges no master. Still, it is as both wolf and man that Maeniel embarks on a hazardous mission for Charlemagne. Captured, Maeniel is condemned to death twice over, as a spy and as a demon changeling. Now, with the help of a Saxon warrior whose love poses dangers of its own, Regeane will brave the icy crags and crevices of the Alps to rescue her husband, only to find that he is the bait in a trap set for her by a villainous man from her darkest past—a man who will stop at nothing to gain the vengeance of which he dreams. But there is another enemy at work. Behind the tangle of ambitions and animosities driving kings and commoners alike, an ancient evil thirsts for a revenge of its own: a revenge that demands the blood of Maeniel and Regeane . . . and of all humanity.