Conspirata ─ A Novel of Ancient Rome

Now available from Encore at a great price! The second installment in Robert Harris’s magnificent Ancient Rome Trilogy is “a portrait of ancient politics as a blood sport,” (The New York Times) where Cicero faces a new power struggle in a world filled with treachery, violence, and vengeance.

On the eve of Cicero’s inauguration as consul of Rome, a grisly discovery sends fear rippling through a city already racked by unrest. A young slave boy has been felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, apparently as a human sacrifice. For Cicero, the ill omens of this hideous murder only increase his dangerous situation: elected leader by the people but despised by the heads of the two rival political camps. Caught in a shell game that leaves him forever putting out fires only to have them ignite elsewhere, Cicero plays for the future of the republic…and his life. There is a plot to assassinate him, abetted by a rising young star of the Roman senate named Gaius Julius Caesar—and it will take all the embattled consul’s wit, strength, and force of will to stop the plot and keep Rome from becoming a dictatorship.

Robert Harris is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children.

Oliver Ford Davies film credits include Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Dalloway, Scandal, and Star Wars Episodes I, II and III. His numerous theatre credits include Larkin With Women, Hamlet, and David Hare's trilogy of Racing Demon (Olivier Award, Best Actor).