Britain's
Bernard Cornwell, prolific creator of the popular series of admired historical fictions about Capt. Richard Sharpe in the Napoleonic wars, has gone back to a much earlier period in English history in a new book,
The Last Kingdom, just acquired as part of a two-book package by his regular editor at HarperCollins,
Dan Conaway. It's the story of a young man's coming-of-age, set in ninth-century Britain, at a time when the country was in danger of being overrun by the Vikings, with only King Alfred standing in their way. It was a seven-figure deal for North American rights, signed with Cornwell's London agent,
Toby Eady, and should bring the author, said Harper publisher
Susan Weinberg, "a whole new strata of readers."
