Checkmate

Before George R. R. Martin there was Dorothy Dunnett . . .

THE PERFECT GIFT for fans of A Game of Thrones.

''She is a brilliant story teller, The Lymond Chronicles will keep you reading late into the night, desperate to know the fate of the characters you have come to care deeply about.'' The Times Literary Supplement

Checkmate is the sixth and final book in the series

-----------------------------

''If they place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left and ask me to give up my mission, I will not give it up until the truth prevails or I myself perish in the attempt . . .''

It is 1557 and legendary Scottish warrior Francis Crawford of Lymond is once more in France. There he is leading an army to rout the hated English from Calais.

Yet while Lymond seeks victory on the battlefield he is haunted by his troubled past - chiefly the truth about his origins and his marriage (in name only) to young Englishwoman Philippa Somerville.

As the French offer him a way out of his marriage and his wife appears in France on a mission of her own, the final moves are made in a great game that has been playing out over an extraordinary decade of war, love and struggle - bringing the Lymond Chronicles to a spellbinding close.

''A masterpiece of historical fiction'' Washington Post

''Melodrama of the most magnificent kind'' The Guardian