Lions of Utica: A Fitzmarbury Witches Ghost Story

AN UNMISSABLE READ FROM THE AMAZON BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE FITZMARBURY WITCHES SERIES.ALSO AVAILABLE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!A blood-skinned ibis soars among vultures in the North African sky, where a new Roman world rises on the ashes of the genocidal slaughter that crushed ancient Carthage. An Anatolian Celtic soldier squints at the parched sun-bleached horizon. He is fresh from the cold damp stones of northern Britannia, after years spent patrolling the great wall that shields Rome's citizens from the frigid lands of the marauding Picts. Disoriented by his new surroundings, his thoughts linger on his former life and a lost love.A native Numidian scout leads the Celt on a reconnaissance mission. At the city walls, the two warriors are confronted by a macabre sight. It is the first of several omens. The cries of merchants and settlers from across the empire ring in their ears as they set out for the town of Utica. The cacophony fades to silence across an earth soaked in the curses and blood of the dead empire that came before Rome. In a twist of fate, the soldiers take the much-avoided back road to Utica. Sinister events ensue as the Celt betrays his guide . . . are they being watched?Do you enjoy historical thrillers and dark fiction? Discover this suspenseful Amazon best seller novelette, for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Philippa Gregory, Ken Follett, George R. R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaimon, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, and others. It is no coincidence that D. J. Swales shares the same last name as Count Dracula's first Whitby victim. If you enjoy LIONS OF UTICA, make sure to buy his Amazon best seller BARATANAC (Part I), a book of historical dark fantasy and thrilling occult horror. The paperback and eBook are available for purchase on Amazon (to read on Kindle or the FREE Kindle App). Read for FREE on Kindle Unlimited.Listen now to D. J. Swales Gothic and Other Tales, a ★TOP 15★ ApplePodcasts audio fiction and audio drama podcast in more than a dozen countries. Available on Audible and all major podcasting platforms.* *Chartable Weekly Audio Fiction and Audio Drama ApplePodcasts Rankings 2020 for 'DJ Swales Gothic & Other Tales'.

From the Inside Flap

Of all dead empires, Phoenician Carthage is the one we are most left to imagine. Its archaeological record is sparse, its glory actively erased. The simmering imperial city was a North African maritime metropolis of vast tentacled colonial influence, refinement and cruelty. A host of gods and richly robed cults served the ambitions of its citizens, migrants, mercenaries and slaves - the orders of the Phoenician god Baal and his consort Tanit supreme among them. In 146 BC, Carthage was extinguished by Rome in a genocidal orgy of blood and flames - the grotesque culmination of more than one hundred years of the Punic Wars - with the city's few survivors shipped away as slaves. Legend holds that Rome - an envious and vicious nemesis - sowed salt over the charred rubble and splintered bones so that life could never return. Aside from a few excavated ruins, such as those in Tunisia and Sardinia, only oblique traces of its former cultural glory remain. Scraps of Roman propaganda and anecdotal Greek accounts provide a pitifully limited lens, especially when compared to what was lost, such as the scrolls and manuscripts of Carthage's libraries that were hauled away as plunder by Numidian kings who had allied with Rome. The pathetic few documents that survived this devastation can only hint at the sophistication and accumulated knowledge of a thousand years that either burned, or disappeared into the mountains and deserts - never to be seen again.In time, Carthage rose again as the third city of the Roman empire, the era within which LIONS OF UTICA is set. A Libyan emperor would even rule the empire from York, in northern England, speaking the Punic of Carthage as his mother tongue. After the collapse of the Roman empire, the Goths would capture Roman Carthage and use the North African city to set out and humble Rome itself, though they would show far more mercy to the captured Mother City than she ever granted her adversaries. Read LIONS OF UTICA and the BARATANAC TRILOGY (set in the earlier Phoenician Carthage), and enter a lost world of spirits and superstitions. When the value of a life was measured in many ways . . . and sorcery wound its own path.- D. J. Swales

About the Author

Author, poet and mixed media artist D. J. Swales was born in West Belfast, during the civil war of "The Troubles". Dangers forced him and his teenage mother into exile. He grew up in Germany, Cyprus and England - and moved to Amarillo and Singapore before his 20th birthday. This early transience cemented DJ's fate as a 'third culture' tumbleweed - living in 12 countries and 3 American states. He has worked in jobs and locales as varied as factory lines, Las Vegas casinos, Namdaemun, Fortnum & Masons, gem trading, Changi airport, construction labouring, Wall Street, Paris Fashion Week, and collecting windblown trash at a city dump. All while finding time to paint and write.

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