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Keahey, John. Following Caesar: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire. St. Martin’s. Dec. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9781250792402. $30. HISTORY

Preston, Douglas. The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder. Grand Central. Dec. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781538741221. $30. Downloadable. TRUE CRIME/HISTORY

Somerville, Christopher. Walking the Bones of Britain: A 3,000 Million Year Geological Journey from the Outer Hebrides to the Thames Estuary. Doubleday. Dec. 2023. 448p. ISBN 9780857527110. $38.99. HISTORY

In Following Caesar, veteran journalist Keahey highlights ancient Roman history by traversing the Via Appia, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312 and 191 BCE and reconstructed by Caesar in the first century BCE; its sister road, the Via Egnatia, connecting Rome and Byzantium; and the Via Traiana, built in the first century CE to circumvent a crumbling portion of the Via Appia (30,000-copy first printing). The Lost Tomb, celebrated thriller writer Preston’s first historical nonfiction collection, travels from Italy and Honduras to Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and the mass grave of animals killed by the asteroid impact that doomed the Cretaceous period to plumb some of history’s deepest mysteries (100,000-copy first printing). Times correspondent Somerville charts his Walking the Bones of Britain, covering thousands of miles of Britain’s surprisingly varied terrain to show how geography shapes history.

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