Historical novelist Bernard Cornwell is best-known for his book and film series about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe, but he has also explored other eras in several other series. Death of Kings is the sixth book in his series about Saxon England. Though NPR book critic and novelist Sharon Penman started this one before reading the rest of the series, she

I am a fan of Bernard Cornwell's writing — I loved Agincourt and his Sharpe series. I was a little hesitant about his newest novel, Death of Kings — it's the sixth book in his series about Saxon England, and I hadn't yet read the other books in the series. But I was delighted to find that the book reads well as a stand-alone novel. The author works his usual magic. His characters are vividly drawn, betrayals lurk around every corner, the humor is as sharp as the swords, and