Stirring tales of faith and hope, love and forgiveness: the novels of the stand-alone Light in the Empire series.

The Light in the Empire series is set between AD 106 and 126. They are stand-alones that explore what it was like for people to live their faith when it could get them killed, and how forgiveness and agape love can change everything for those around them (with a romance woven in as well). Every book includes historical notes and a discussion guide for students (great for those studying World History) and reader groups.

The novels of the series will take you around the Empire during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, from Germania and Britannia to Thracia, Dacia, and Judaea and, of course, to Rome itself.

Christian historical fiction with accurate history at the heart of every novel.

Roman Empire novels by Carol Ashby

E-books available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.au, other international Amazon sites, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Walmart.

Available in hardcover and paperback
US: Amazon.com and international Amazon sites, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Thriftbooks, alibris, Abebooks, Better World Books, Book Depository, Walmart, and many independent bookstores through Indiebound.org and Bookshop.org.

UK: Amazon.co.uk, Book Depository, Wordery, and Waterstones
Australia: Amazon.com.au, Angus & Robertson, Booktopia, and Boomerang Books.
Canada: Amazon.ca and Indigo Books
Available at many other online booksellers and by special order through many independent bookshops.

Volume 12 of the Light in the Empire Series

Is truth worth the price if it costs you everything?

For Tribune Glabrio, descended from three consuls of Rome and determined to be the fourth, commanding the troops policing Carthago appears ideal for hastening his political rise. Arriving from Rome with the secretly Christian Sartorus as his aide, Glabrio discovers the man he was to replace has vanished without a trace. Was the missing tribune too close to finding the counterfeiters Glabrio is now hunting? But no matter the cost, duty and honor require him to enforce Roman law.
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Volume 11 of the Light in the Empire Series

When faced with impossible choices, how do you decide what matters most?

For ten years, the incorruptible Tribune Titianus enforced Rome’s laws. He’s four days from leaving the Urban Cohort to teach at his brother-in-law Kaeso’s school when Emperor Hadrian and the Praetorian Prefect draft him to secretly investigate and thwart an assassination plot…one that might involve his own commander. He can’t refuse, but if Hadrian’s enemies discover his Christian faith, will it mean death for everyone he loves?
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Volume 10 of the Light in the Empire Series

Duty and honor had anchored his life, but only truth could set him free.

Devotion to duty and dogged determination make Tribune Titianus the most feared investigator of the Urban Cohort. Honor drives him to hunt down anyone who breaks Roman law, but it becomes personal when Lenaeus, his old tutor, is murdered in his own classroom. Why kill a respected teacher of the noble sons of Rome, a man who has nothing worth stealing and no known enemies? Had he learned something too dangerous to let him live?
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Volume 9 of the Light in the Empire Series

Must the secrets we hide destroy our hope for a future?

For a gladiator slave, each time you step on the sand, it’s kill or die. When Ursus decides to follow Jesus, he must choose to die the next time he’s ordered to fight…or run away. He runs, taking again his childhood name, Matti. But he isn’t just trying to escape. He’s running to Thessalonica, where he hopes to find other Christians like the woman who led him to faith.
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Volume 8 of the Light in the Empire Series

Honor had forced him to protect her. Time would tell if he’d regret it.

Marcus Brutus owns estates, ships, and gladiator schools that increase his fortune daily, but his greatest treasures are his honor and his wife. When she reveals her faith in Jesus before dying after the birth of their son, he’s consumed by hatred for the unnamed Christian woman who led his beloved to abandon the Roman gods, making him lose her in this life and the next.
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Volume 7 of the Light in the Empire Series

Can the deepest loss bring the greatest gain?

Rome’s conquering army took Ariana’s family and freedom, but nothing can take her faith in Jesus. When she rescues a tribune’s wife from certain death, her reward is freedom and a chance to free her brother and sister. But first she must catch up with the slave caravan before they vanish forever, and tracking them from Dacia to the coast seems impossible for one woman alone.
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Volume 6 of the Light in the Empire Series

The chains we cannot see can be the hardest ones to break.

When Aulus runs up a gambling debt to his father’s political enemy, he’s desperate to pay it off before his father returns to Rome. His best friend Marcus suggests they fake the kidnapping of Aulus’s sister Julia and use the ransom money. But when the man they hired kidnaps her for real, Aulus is catapulted into a desperate search to find her. More

Volume 5 of the Light in the Empire Series

Must the shadows of the past destroy the hope of the future?

In AD 122, Cornelia Scipia, proud daughter of one of Rome’s noblest families, learns her adulterous husband plans to betroth their daughter to the vicious son of his best friend. Over her dead body! Cornelia divorces him, reclaims her enormous dowry, and kidnaps her own daughter. She plans to start over with Drusilla a thousand miles away. No more husbands for her. But she didn’t count on meeting Hector, the widowed Greek captain of the ship carrying her to her new life. More

Volume 4 of the Light in the Empire Series

Is the price of true friendship ever too high?

In AD 122, Adela, the fiery daughter of a Germanic chieftain, is kidnapped and taken across the Roman frontier to be sold as a slave. When horse-trader Otto wins her while gambling with her kidnappers, he entrusts her to his friend and trading partner, Galen. Then Otto is kidnapped by the same men, and Galen must track them half way across the Empire before his best friend loses a fight to the death in a Roman arena. More

Volume 3 of the Light in the Empire Series

When Rome has taken everything, what’s left for a man to give?

Betrayed by a ruthless son who’ll do anything for power and wealth, Publius Drusus faces death with an unanswered prayer―that his treasured daughter, Claudia, and honorable son, Titus, will someday share his faith. But who will lead them to the truth once he’s gone? More

Volume 2 of the Light in the Empire Series

Sometimes you have to almost die to discover how you want to live.

It’s AD 114 in the Roman province of Germania Superior, and being a Christian carries a death sentence. Tribune Decimus Lentulus is on the fast track for a stellar political career back in Rome. When he’s robbed, blinded, and left for dead, a young German woman who follows the Way finds him. More

Volume 1 of the Light in the Empire Series

Are some wounds too deep to forgive?

With a ruthless father who murdered for the family inheritance, Marcus Drusus plans to do the same. In AD 122, Marcus follows his brother Lucius to Judaea and plots to frame a zealot for his older brother’s death. More