Mary Renault

Fire from Heaven is a 1969 historical novel by Mary Renault about the childhood and youth of Alexander the Great. It reportedly was a major inspiration for the Oliver Stone film Alexander. The book was nominated for the “Lost Man Booker Prize” of 1970, "a contest delayed by 40 years because a reshuffling of the …

The Bull from the Sea is the sequel to Mary Renault's The King Must Die. It continues the story of the mythological hero Theseus after his return from Crete.

The Charioteer is a 1953 war novel by Mary Renault. It was first published in the United States in 1959. The Charioteer is significant because it features a prominent gay theme at an early date and quickly became a bestseller within the gay community.

In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault's Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure-a king …