Dark Winds Rising

Book excerpt: "A continuation of Branwen's story in Between Two Fires, Dark Winds Rising combines elements of mystery and romance with author Mark Noce's gift for storytelling. Queen Branwen finds her world once again turned upside down as Pictish raiders harry the shores of her kingdom. Rallying her people once more, she must face her most dangerous foe yet, the Queen of the Picts. Ruthless and cunning, the Pictish Queen turns the Welsh against each other in a bloody civil war, and Branwen must attempt to stop her before her country threatens to tear itself apart. All the while Branwen is heavy with child, and finds her young son's footsteps dogged by a mysterious assassin. Branwen must somehow defeat the Picts and save her people before the Pictish Queen and a mysterious assassin threaten to destroy their lives from the inside out. Set in a time and era in which very little reliable written records or archeological remains have survived, Mark Noce bases his novel on primary sources such as St. Gildas (a Welsh cleric of the era), mythology from the Welsh Mabinogion, and Arthurian literature. Although the characters and some of the place names are fictional, the physical environment, the historical details, and the saga of the Welsh people is real"--