Alexander the Great stands alone as a leader and strategist, and Fire from Heaven is Mary Renault's unsurpassed dramatization of the formative years of his life. His parents fight for their precocious son's love: On one side, his volatile father, Philip, and on the other, his overbearing mother, Olympias. The story tells of the conqueror's two great bonds-to his horse, Oxhead, and to his dearest friend and eventual lover, Hephaistion-and of the army he commands when he is barely an adult. Coming of age during the battles for southern Greece, Alexander the Great appears in all of his colors-as the man who first takes someone's life at age twelve and who swiftly eliminates his rivals as soon as he comes to power-and emerges as a captivating, complex, larger-than-life figure. Fire from Heaven is the first volume of the Novels of Alexander the Great trilogy, which continues with The Persian Boy and Funeral Games. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author

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