In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.

THEY SAY THE BEST WAY TO KILL A GOD IS TO STOP BELIEVING. WHAT IF THE GODS DON'T WANT TO DIE? It is a troubled time. The old gods are returning and they want the universe back. The Conclave has ruled the 700 known worlds since the fall of the gods. It is an empire built upon a lie. Together with the Inquisition and the mighty Prekhauten Guard, they preserve peace and justice for all, while stamping out heresy when it arises.

Senior Inquisitor Tolde Breed is sent to the planet Crimeat to investigate the escape of one of the deadliest beings in the history of the universe: Amongeratix, one of the fabled THREE, sons of the god-king. He arrives on a world where heresy breeds insurrection, and war is only a matter of time. Aided by Sister Abigail of the Order of Blood Witches, and a company of Prekhauten Guards, Tolde hurries to find Amongeratix and return him to Conclave custody before he can restart his reign of terror.

Perfect for fans of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Safehold series, and the Horus Heresy, Dreams of Winter is the first book in the exciting new military science fiction series the Forgotten Gods.