Four women join forces to survive the invasion of Paris with conviction, courage – and style France, April 1940. Polly Hartford has been sent across oceans to her Aunt Marjorie, known only from letters. When Marjorie dies in suspicious circumstances, Polly is left with her aunt's loaded pistol in a beautiful Hermès handbag – and to the care of Marjorie's three friends: an elegant Comtesse, a gutter-born film star, and a big-hearted American heiress. Polly is taken to live at the Hôtel Ritz, where those who live there think money protects them from war ... But when the Nazis invade, the illusion is shattered. As Paris deteriorates, Polly and her guardians face the horrors of the Occupation with courage, humour, style – even romance – and discover just what they are capable of. As the Liberation approaches, those who survive must face a day of reckoning, but one truth stands tall: at the heart of the Ritz is the soul of resistance....

Rome is bathed in blood as the Emperor Tiberius is tormented by drug-fuelled terrors of treason. The innocent are butchered while the guilty do evil in darkness. None are guiltier than the Emperor's devoted and deluded 'son', Sejanus. In this city of poison three beautiful women are locked in a lethal rivalry... Agrippina. Driven mad with grief, her obsession with revenge for her murdered husband imperils the lives of her children. Apicata. Robbed of her eyes and embittered in her heart, she schemes in the shadows to empower the husband who despises her. Livilla. Sensual and sly, she is gripped by a lust for a lover as deadly as he is desirable. Three women. One goal. Who will be Empress of Rome? Moving stealthily among them is Iphicles, arch schemer and slave, whose haunted heart is lightened by the eunuch Lygdus, his willing apprentice in murder. With paralysed Livia now a helpless captive to her slave, it is the repellent brat Little Boots' turn to profit from prophecy....