Middle Empire

In the discordant and dangerous Rome of 249 AD Centurion Marcus Favonius, youngest son of a politically ambitious family, has attracted the enmity of the powerful Praetorian Guard. He flees to Spain accompanied by two comrades: Flavius Priscus, his loyal and street-wise second-in-command, and Demaratus, a Greek former sailor with a keen sense of history and an outsider's perspective. As the three evade assassination and establish themselves in Spain's VII Legion, they are pulled into adventure and romance so immersive that the reader is firmly planted in the ancient world of Roman-occupied Spain.

Mauretania, the second book in Conn Hallinan's powerful Middle Empire series, finds comrades Marcus, Flavius and Demartus leading a daring expedition into northern Africa to rescue a group of their countrymen, among them Marcus's love Aelia, who have been kidnapped and enslaved by Mauri slave traders. They are betrayed by the local authorities and must fight their way through to achieve their mission, in the process becoming mired in the political corruption of a weakened and faltering Roman Empire.

Conn Hallinan's three-volume Middle Empire series comes to its riveting conclusion in Tarraco. In these years, the Roman empire was besieged by powerful allied tribes while corruption, inflation and political plots destabilized it from within. Against this backdrop, Marcus and his loyal comrades Flavius and Demartus are ordered to free the city of Tarraco, in Catalonia, from Frankish occupation. As Roman fighters barricade themselves inside a tower and Demartus' love, a red-headed Celt and fierce fighter, is hunted by the Franks, the interweaving political intrigue, military strategy, and struggle of civilians under siege bring intense drama to the denouement of a remarkable series.

Moving on with their lives, the Fitzgerald siblings are busy with work, classes and wedding preparations, when they receive the call from Mr. Brewster that their time traveling machine is missing from the barn! They must pause their activities and again devote all their energies and expertise to discovering who has stolen their secret means of moving through time. When they find the shredded pages and photos in the barn, along with a notebook none of them recognize, they figure out who has taken their machine. He is after revenge against Joe and all the Fitzgerald's and their friends for some imagined wrong done to him. His twisted, evil intent has them moving through time in an effort to stop him and keep him from unraveling history as they know it. Jumping from the stock market crash, back to a time when inventions were being made, they strive to stop Tom, the angry young man who has stolen the machine. When he fails to accomplish his first mission, he moves on to wreaking havoc with the historical events that Kim and Deb and all the Fitzgerald's try hard to protect. Not able to get in front of the efforts of this enemy, and after a confrontation between Tom and Ryan where Ryan was severely injured, Ken and Joe work to devise a way to use their knowledge to stop Tom. When they manage to keep history in place and thwart every effort this adversary makes, Tom, enraged, finds himself in the crosshairs of the battle of Gettysburg. An unlikely event shifts Ken, Joe, Ryan and Becky's plans from capture to care-taker. Then the unthinkable happens and they are faced with a question they never dreamed would happen. What to do when someone time traveling dies? The questions and issues of all of their time travel come back to them in the days tracking Tom. Clearly, time travel has become dangerous as someone new has access to this means of moving through time. The team of siblings and their friends must make hard choices to solve this new problem and to find their way back to their lives. These relatable characters you've met as teens grow up and face real challenges of time travel in this latest installment of the Time Benders series.

In this fifth and final book of The Middle Empire Series, Marcus and the VII Legion are drawn into the civil war between the Roman Empire and the breakaway Gallic Empire. Having survived the intrigues of Roma, including two assassination attempts, Marcus, Flavius, Demaratus, and their companions, Aelia, Rachel, and Coventina, return to Hispania. But now the stakes are higher. It is no longer the matter of an inheritance agreement, but if, after over 800 years, the Roman Empire will break apart in a civil war. The new Gallic Empire threatens to add this western colony to its anti-Roma alliance, and the only thing standing in its way is the VII Legion. Marcus gathers the legion and those still loyal to Roma to Corduba for a showdown. The politics-both historical and interpersonal-are intriguing, and we see the lives and loves of the characters we've grown to know in a new light. Marcus's teenage niece, Sabina, has grown from a child to a young woman and becomes an important player in what may be the VII Legion's final act. Over the decade of these books, Marcus and the VII Legion have faced enemies within and without, and have successfully vanquished them all. Can the VII Legion Hispania Gemina Pia survive its final adversary?