(Book 3)

Kingmaker: Divided Souls

A gripping historical fiction series set amid England's War of the Roses in which the Houses of Lancaster and York faced each other on the field of battle - and the Tudors won.

'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel 
 
Toby Clement's third epic historical novel set during England's bloody and brutal War of the Roses.

Once again Toby Clements knocks it out of the park … the characters and the writing is first class, there are no holes or weaknesses in the plot of this book that just powers along, holding the reader remorselessly in its grip

Prepare to be immersed in a brutal, mesmerising tale.

Toby Clements’ Kingmaker saga has become one of my favourite historical series and without doubt Divided Souls is my favourite so far and, considering how fantastic Winter Pilgrims is, that’s quite an achievement … This is such a well-written series.

Toby Clements has just given enough time for our finger nails to grow before making us chew them down again … Toby comes at us with twists and shocks that keep the pages turning.

Brilliant, vividly real and fast moving ... Historical novel writing at its best

Prepare to be immersed in a brutal, mesmerising tale

This fine series reaches new heights in Divided Souls, an exhilarating, thrilling read, splattered with blood and gore.

Divided Souls is such a rich and exciting novel...it’s seamless, and it’s convincing. It’s surprising how many historical novelists fail to imagine a pre-photograph world where you don’t know what great men look like, any more than you know what a dragon looks like, and you can’t be sure if they’re real or not... Get the pollaxe back, and proceed.

A product of vivid imagination and astute historical knowledge, tempered by fine writing skills.

This fine series reaches new heights in DIVIDED SOULS, an exhilarating, thrilling read spattered with blood and gore

Toby Clements was inspired to write the Kingmaker series having first become obsessed by the Wars of the Roses after a school trip to Tewkesbury Abbey, on the steps of which the Lancastrian claim to the English throne was extinguished in a welter of blood in 1471. 
 
Since then he has read everything he can get his hands on and spent long weekends at re-enactment fairs. He has learned to use the longbow and how to fight with the poll axe, how to start a fire with a flint and steel and a shred of baked linen. He has even helped tan a piece of leather (a disgusting experience involving lots of urine and dog faeces). Little by little he became less interested in the dealings of the high and mighty, however colourful and amazing they might have been, and more fascinated by the common folk of the 15th Century: how they lived, loved, fought and died. How tough they were, how resourceful, resilient and clever. As much as anything this book is a hymn to them. 
 
He lives in London with his wife and three children. This is his second novel.

'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel 
 
1469: Although the Yorkist King Edward sits on his throne in Westminster, within his family there is discord as his former ally, the Earl of Warwick, continues to conspire against him. 
 
And while to one another's faces they are all smiles, their household men speak in lies and whispers. No man comes to court unarmed. 
 
As riot and rebellion stalk the land, so too do rumours of a secret, which, if proved true, will have devastating effects on the kingdom. 
 
Once again Thomas and Katherine Everingham are drawn into the fray by ruthless enemies and by past lives that refuse to be forgotten… 
 
 
'Mesmerising' The Times 
 
'Consistently enthralling' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Exhilarating'' Daily Express 
 
'Wonderfully accurate' Daily Mail 
 
'Rich, exciting, seamless and convincing' Hilary Mantel

(Book 2)

Kingmaker: Broken Faith

Set during England's bloody and brutal War of the Roses, this is the second novel in an epic historical fiction series. If you liked Conn Iggulden's Stormbird, you will love Toby Clements’ KINGMAKER novels.

Toby Clements is an exceptionally good writer. His debut was a tour de force. His second novel outdoes that, bringing new depth to his characters, and continuing his vivid, blood-soaked insight into the real, grim, ghastly, and occasionally glorious human cost of the Wars of the Roses.  This is history in the raw: powerful, potent stuff, always real, but always gloriously unpredictable.   This is a gem of a book, one of my must-reads for this year.

This is a miserable, vicious world, vividly recreated by Clements. Immersive historical fiction at its best.

The book glides along effortlessly, it’s a simple excellent love story, bursting with action, intrigue and history. a real contender for book of the year.

It's raw and heart-rending… A searing narrative that will definitely stay with you after you've closed the book.

Searingly good ... Immersive historical fiction at its best

This is a wonderful series – violent, bloody, squirm-inducing and bleak… History and fiction mix so well in this series, bringing to life the period

If you like books that grip you from the very start, that are fast-paced with fascinating characters, then this is the book for you. Beautifully written, with an exciting plot, this book kept me engaged on every page

This is a wonderful series – violent, bloody, squirm-inducing and bleak. What saves it from sinking us into the despair of the times is Thomas and Katherine, both of whom are very easy to care for…History and fiction mix so well in this series, bringing to life a period that I am so happy to read about very relieved I don’t have to live through. I look forward to book three very much indeed!

'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel 
 
'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel 
 
October, 1463 
 
England is a divided nation. In the north, the Lancastrian king struggles to hold power, while in the south, the princes of the house of York prepare for war. 
 
Across this land, pursued by the Church and the Law, a young man, Thomas, and a young woman, Katherine, make their way, bearing proof of a secret both sides will kill to learn. 
 
Bent on revenge for a past outrage, Thomas and Katherine journey to the mighty castle of Bamburgh to join a weakening king as he marshals his army to take up arms in one of the most savage civil wars in history: the Wars of the Roses. 
 
‘Searingly good.’ Sunday Times 
 
‘Immersive’ The Times 
 
‘Evocative and direct’ Independent

(Book 1)

Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

Set during England's bloody and brutal War of the Roses, the first novel in an epic historical fiction series. If you liked Conn Iggulden's Stormbird, you will love Toby Clement's KINGMAKER novels.

Magnificent. An historical tour de force, revealing Clements to be a novelist every bit as good as Cornwell, Gregory or Iggulden. Kingmaker is the best book I’ve read this year by some margin.

It’s amazing …  there’s a real sense of time and place, and real immersion in the period, real rounded characters, with utterly plausible lives.  Fantastic!  People who love Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell are going to love it too.

Toby Clements captures the grimness, grit and grime of 15th-century life, but with compassion and humanity, as seen through the eyes of common people ... period detail is wonderfully accurate as are the setpiece skirmishes and bloodbath at Towton.

It is Clements’s ability to excite both tender emotions and a capacity for bloodthirstiness that has allowed him to achieve what Shakespeare couldn’t manage, and spin a consistently enthralling story out of the Wars of the Roses.

Clements truly lets rip with the poleaxes, billhooks and glaives, sparing no detail as he recreates the blood and thunder of the battlefield ... But mere retro-bloodfest this is not - amid the butchery emerges a tender, heroic love story.

I loved this from the first page, and if you ask me, this is what it’s all about. There’s an immediacy, an accessibility to Clements’ writing that makes the story leap from the page in all its vivid, vibrant glory. In fact this story reads like a film script, which shows that here is a writer who knows his business. Atmosphere, drama, great characters and a brilliantly imagined medieval world - Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims took me on a journey. I’m already looking forward to the next one. Storytelling doesn’t get much better than this.

The first of what promises to be one of the best historical adventure series to hit the shelves this year ... an author born to be a storyteller ... Kingmaker proves to be a thrilling, stomach-churning odyssey into the grime, gore and guts of the brutal medieval world. There is an addictive, raw excitement to Clements’ writing ... Prepare to be shocked, amazed… and thoroughly entertained.

Epic adventuring that had me hooked… I loved this story, non-stop action featuring a lovely pair of modest but surprising heroes…The best adventure novel I have read in quite a while.

If you like your fiction with a bit of grit and swagger, this is really something you should try.

What a book! This superb novel, alive with fire, blood and mud, has brought me as close to the Wars of the Roses as I could ever want to get. Historical fiction at its best ... Kingmaker is one of the finest historical novels I’ve read and fortunately it’s just the first in a trilogy. I look forward to much more from Toby Clements.

His writing has a feel of authenticity that is sometimes lacking in other books. I could almost imagine that I really was standing in the middle of a muddy battlefield with arrows flying around me, walking through a smelly, bustling market place or watching Katherine performing surgery without the benefits of modern medicine. There’s certainly nothing glamorous about this story!

The narrative, quick-paced, direct and written in the vivid present ... the repression, anger and bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses was itself frequently beyond belief. Clements’s pages are aflutter 
with that conflict’s every emotion.

My best historical novel is Winter Pilgrims. Toby Clements’ blood-fuelled ‘I was there’ rampage through the Wars of the Roses.

Fans of Tudor history in search of post-Mantel fix will be intrigued ... Clements' storytelling is evocative and direct.

Toby Clements has provides ripping action we can be absorbed by and relate to; a talent that many more experienced authors have yet to grasp.

Toby Clements has a rich knowledge of the history of the times and this is evident in his writing. His depictions of the way people lived their lives during this turbulent time in our history is so vivid you feel a definite sense of being there. …the most enjoyable historical novel I have read for some time.

Toby Clements was inspired to write Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims having first become obsessed by the Wars of the Roses after a school trip to Tewkesbury Abbey, on the steps of which the Lancastrian claim to the English throne was extinguished in a welter of blood in 1471. 
 
Since then he has read everything he can get his hands on and spent long weekends at re-enactment fairs. He has learned to use the longbow and how to fight with the poll axe, how to start a fire with a flint and steel and a shred of baked linen. He has even helped tan a piece of leather (a disgusting experience involving lots of urine and dog faeces). Little by little he became less interested in the dealings of the high and mighty, however colourful and amazing they might have been, and more fascinated by the common folk of the 15th Century: how they lived, loved, fought and died. How tough they were, how resourceful, resilient and clever. As much as anything this book is a hymn to them. 
 
He lives in London with his wife and three children. Winter Pilgrims is his first novel.

_____________________ 
'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel 
 
FEBRUARY 1460 
 
In the bitter dawn of a winter’s morning, a young man and a woman escape from a priory. 
 
Fearing for their lives, they are forced to flee across a land ravaged by conflict. 
 
For this England, torn apart by the infamous Wars of the Roses, one of the most savage and bloody civil wars in history. 
 
Brother confronts brother. King faces king, 
 
And Thomas and Katherine, two seemingly unimportant figures in the midst of chaos and bloodshed, must fight just to stay alive ...

Toby Clements

Toby Clements does it again with another powerhouse of a book: thrilling and literate, engaging, passionate, deeply moving and full of historical detail of the sort that fills me with awe for the fortitude of our ancestors and yet makes me so glad I live in the safety of the twenty-first century.  This is going to be one of the stellar series of our generation, redefining that period of history that we think we know, and discover we really don’t.  Bravo!

Should be required reading for fans of historical fiction

A major achievement in historical fiction

Clements is so convincing on the detail of his characters’ lives that it is difficult to believe that he never walked in the brutal, messy world he conjures up on the page

Toby Clements’ Kingmaker series is historical fiction at its very finest - and Kingdom Come is the best of them all.

Exhilarating… spine-chilling depiction of medieval warfare and surgery

Toby's battle scenes remain some of the best in hist-fict…Clements should be awarded laurels for this historical fiction series

(Book 4)

1470 
 
The recent tensions between King Edward and his great ally the Earl of Warwick lie forgotten these past months, but even as winter tightens her grip on the land, the peace is shattered by a vicious attack on one of the King’s allies. 
 
Long buried secrets are brought to the surface, and Thomas and Katherine must finally decide where their loyalties lie and to choose between fight or flight, knowing either choice will incur a terrible price. 
 
From Lincoln to Bruges, from Barnet to the great battle at Tewkesbury, both must play their part in one of the most savage wars in history. 
 
The wars of the roses. 
 
'Should be required reading for fans of historical fiction' The Times 
 
'Toby Clements does it again with another powerhouse of a book: thrilling and literate, engaging, passionate, deeply moving and full of historical detail of the sort that fills me with awe for the fortitude of our ancestors and yet makes me so glad I live in the safety of the twenty-first century. This is going to be one of the stellar series of our generation, redefining that period of history that we think we know, and discover we really don’t. Bravo!' Manda Scott 
 
'A major achievement in historical fiction' Historia Magazine 
 
'Clements is so convincing on the detail of his characters’ lives that it is difficult to believe that he never walked in the brutal, messy world he conjures up on the page' The Times 
 
'Toby Clements’ Kingmaker series is historical fiction at its very finest - and Kingdom Come is the best of them all.' William Ryan

Toby Clements

Praise for Kingmaker: Kingdom Come

Toby Clements does it again with another powerhouse of a book: thrilling and literate, engaging, passionate, deeply moving and full of historical detail of the sort that fills me with awe for the fortitude of our an ...

Should be required reading for fans of historical fiction

A major achievement in historical fiction

Toby Clements does it again with another powerhouse of a book: thrilling and literate, engaging, passionate, deeply moving and full of historical detail of the sort that fills me with awe for the fortitude of our an ...

Should be required reading for fans of historical fiction

A major achievement in historical fiction

Toby Clements does it again with another powerhouse of a book: thrilling and literate, engaging, passionate, deeply moving and full of historical detail of the sort that fills me with awe for the fortitude of our an ...

Should be required reading for fans of historical fiction

A major achievement in historical fiction

Books by Toby Clements

Series by Toby Clements

Kingmaker

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