In Kings’ Byways

Set in the France of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this collection gathers short stories of court intrigue, loyalty, and quiet peril from one of the late-Victorian era’s most popular writers of historical romance. The book falls into three parts: a run of standalone tales including “Crillon’s Stake” and “The King’s Stratagem,” a linked sequence titled “The Diary of a Statesman,” and a closing group under “King Terror” that reaches forward into the years of the Revolution. Weyman works in period texture: palace corridors, back roads, and the small decisions on which a life or a cause can turn. Readers who enjoy Dumas or brisk historical adventure will find him an easy companion here, economical, evenly paced, and sure of his ground in French history.