Spyderwort Originals

The Executioner's Heir: A Novel of Eighteenth-Century France

Susanne Alleyn

Historical Fiction. Charles-Henri Sanson has good looks, a fine education, and plenty of money: everything that a stylish young Parisian of the 1760s could ask for. He also has an infamous family name—and he’s trapped in a hideous job that no one wants. And when disaster strikes, in this true story of destiny and conflicting loyalties in decadent, treacherous pre-revolutionary France, family duty demands that Charles take his father’s place much sooner than he had ever imagined.

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer's (& Editor's) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, & Myths [Third Edition]

Susanne Alleyn

Writing Skills / Historical Trivia. NEW expanded 3rd edition. A detailed guide to the most common factual mistakes that writers of historical fiction make—and how to avoid them. From medieval knights smoking cigars to characters crossing streets that wouldn’t exist for another 2000 years, historical novelist Alleyn exposes and explains the often hilarious, always painful goofs that frequently turn up in fiction set in the past.

Romans Were Known for Their Aquaducks: And Other Gems of Wit and Wisdom in Western Civilization

Brian E. Strayer

Humor. Western Civ 101 was never quite like this! In a fractured, fictionalized, hilarious interpretation of events, here are five thousand years' worth of genuine student bloopers ("The Vaccuum is a large empty space where the popes live in Rome"), straight from the pens and exams of freshmen and sophomores trying desperately to make some sense out of the past.

The Annotated A Tale of Two Cities [Originally published as A Tale of Two Cities: A Reader's Companion]

Annotations to the unabridged text & additional material by Susanne Alleyn

Literary Criticism / Reference. You’re reading A Tale Of Two Cities for the first time—or the fifth time. But what are gaols, bumpers, farmer-generals, and tocsins? Did all those starving French people mean baguettes when they wanted bread? The Annotated A Tale of Two Cities has over 780 notes about things, people, places, and events mentioned in the text, plus bonus material, to enhance a classic historical novel published 150 years ago.