Dunnett, Dorothy

(British, 1932–2001)

Dorothy Dunnett was a hugely popular historical novelist, as the number of websites dedicated to her show. King Hereafter (1982) is a dark and full-blooded re-creation of the life of the original Macbeth: Thorfinn II, King of Scotland in the eleventh century. If, like many readers, you really fall in love with Dunnett's world, then you should certainly go on to the Lymond books, starting with The Game of Kings (1961), a series of six novels set in sixteenth-century Scotland, fabulously rich and romantic, and with one of modern fiction's most entrancing heroes: the darkly Byronic Lymond himself.

Mary Renault, Mary Stewart, Walter Scott  CH