It seems Anastasia, ex-courtesan of Constantinople, is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After cheating death in the provinces, she makes it back home only to find her friend’s new lover on death row, a Nordic adventurer intent on winning her hand in marriage, and a city about to explode into chaos.
Caught up in the coils of the subtle and brilliant Empress Theodora, she agrees to become a spy for the Empire, but she could hardly have chosen a worse moment.
Popular feeling is rising against the Emperor Justinian and his wife, and for once the city’s warring sports factions come together to demand change. When a rival claimant emerges to the throne of the eastern Roman Empire, Justinian and Theodora’s very lives are at stake – together with the lives of thousands of ordinary citizens.
Including Anastasia’s.
F.L.Rose’s historical thriller is set at the height of the Byzantine Empire, whose capital was Constantinople, the ancient city bestriding the Greco-Roman west and Persian east. Cruel, violent, sophisticated and brilliant, Constantinople was the centre of the new Roman world for a thousand years. In the sixth century AD, Justinian, Constantinople’s greatest Emperor, and his beautiful ex-prostitute wife Theodora sit the throne – but in one momentous week, it seems that everything they have built together will be swept away in a tide of blood and fire… All The Evils is the story of that week.