Novels

THE MARTYRDOM OF TEN THOUSAND

The Reformation: everyone knows that Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg to protest the sale of indulgences. What happened afterward? Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms to defend his writings. When he refused, fearing for his life, he faked his own abduction and went into hiding in a tower deep in the forest, where he spent the next year writing increasingly inflammatory tracts against priesthood, the Pope, and the Church in Rome.

At the same time, Luther lost touch with his closest ally, Andreas Karlstadt, a fellow reformer who had traveled and taught with him. While Luther’s theology splintered the Church, his personality divided the faculty, ruined his friendships, and spurred the catastrophe known as the Peasant’s Revolt.

The Martyrdom of Ten Thousand tells the story with a cast of true historical characters: Muntzer, the radical reformer, and his wife Ottilie, a former nun; Karlstadt, the spurned associate and friend/rival of Martin Luther; Melanchthon, Luther’s young disciple and understudy; and, of course, the monk-turned-monolith, Martin Luther himself.

A MUTED HYMN

When Jeanne of Arc joined the war, the Royal French Army finally started to win. Before that point, they had suffered one disastrous defeat after another. Fighting alongside her are two French commanders of varying dispositions. Baron Gilles de Rais is young, rich, handsome, and well-educated, with a love for chanson de geste (epic French romances of the past). His counterpart is La Hire, a mustachioed lifelong soldier with a ribald sense of humor.

When Jeanne is captured, tried, and killed, these two commanders react in very different ways. La Hire continues Jeanne’s fight to free France from the invaders responsible for her death. The Baron, on the other hand, retires to his castle where he languishes in sullen self-pity, forms a choir of young boys and, according to rumor, begins to murder them one by one.

When La Hire hears the rumors, he hurries to the Baron’s castle to investigate. And the rest, as they say, is history.