While armies of the Shadowrealms gather and Machiavelli goes to Alcatraz to kill Perenelle Flamel, fifteen-year-old twins Sophie and Josh Newman accompany the Alchemist to England to seek Gilgamesh.

Nicholas Flamel and teenaged twins Josh and Sophie Newman return to San Francisco where a weakened Flamel reunites with his wife, Perenelle, hoping to use his remaining power to prevent the monsters on Alcatraz Island from escaping. Meanwhile, Dr. John Dee and Machiavelli continue to seek power and the twins desperately try to determine who they can trust as they search for Scatty and an immortal who can teach Josh the magic of fire.

Back in London, fifteen-year-old twins Sophie and Josh Newman must determine whom they can and cannot trust as they search for both Scatty and an immortal who can teach Josh the magic of fire, while Doctor Dee and Machiavelli continue to seek power.

Fifteen-year-old twins Sophie and Josh Newman continue their magical training in Paris with Nicholas Flamel, Scatty, and the Comte de Sant Germaine, pursued by Doctor Dee and the immortal Niccolo Machiavelli.

Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her "'weak and feeble' woman's body" to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton's fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince-an expert in Machiavellian...

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching],...

Niccolò Machiavelli is sent as an envoy of the Republic of Florence by Cesare Borgia. The dreaded prince is about to conquer Italy, and does not care about the Emperor or the King of France. From an episode emerges the magnificent portrait of the Italian Renaissance period. A love intrigue is also interwoven in this out of the ordinary Maugham novel where he sets the stage for Machiavelli's "The Prince" and play, "The Mandrake".

"In a series of poignant vignettes, a preeminent historian makes a compelling case for Machiavelli as an unjustly maligned figure with valuable political insights that resonate as strongly today as they did in his time. Whenever a tempestuous period in history begins, Machiavelli is summoned, because he is known as one for philosophizing in dark times. In fact, since his death in 1527, we have never ceased to read him to pull ourselves out of torpors....