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and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

Fiction/978-0-679-77743-4

QUEENS’ PLAY

Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

Fiction/978-0-679-77744-1

THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.

Fiction/978-0-679-77745-8

PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE

Lymond cuts a desperate path across the Ottoman empire of Suleiman the Magnificent in search of a kidnapped child, an effort that may place this adventurer in the power of his enemies. What ensues is a subtle and savage chess game whose gambits include treachery, enslavement, and torture and whose final move compels Lymond to face the darkest ambiguities of his own nature.

Fiction/978-0-679-77746-5

THE RINGED CASTLE

Between Mary Tudor’s England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible lies a vast distance indeed, but forces within the Tudor court impel Lymond to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. In this barbaric land, Lymond finds his gifts for intrigue and survival tested to the breaking point, yet these dangers are nothing beside those of England, where Lymond’s oldest enemies are conspiring against him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77747-2

CHECKMATE

Francis Crawford returns to France to lead an army against England. But even as the soldier-scholar succeeds brilliantly on the battlefield, his haunted past becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond’s parentage possesses the power to control him—or destroy him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77748-9

VINTAGE BOOKS

Available at your local bookstore, or visit

www.randomhouse.com

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1997

Copyright © 1961 by Dorothy Dunnett

Copyright renewed 1989 by Dorothy Dunnett

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, in 1961 and subsequently in Great Britain by Cassell & Company Ltd., London, in 1962.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dunnett, Dorothy.

The game of kings / Dorothy Dunnett. —1st Vintage Books ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76232-0

1. Scotland—History—Mary Stuart, 1542–1567—Fiction. I. Title. PR6054.U56G36 1997

823′.914—dc21 96-46867

Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com/

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