When a troubling discovery disturbs the peace that Cyrus and his wife Cassandane had worked so hard to establish for their tiny kingdom of Parsa (the heart of future Persia), plans for the palace at Pasargad must wait. In truth, things are much, much worse. To the east Babylonia's internal unrest rises to a boiling point. And in the north, despite Amytis's efforts, her paranoid father King Astyages sets in motion a series of events that will change the world forever.
A stand-alone novel, Beat the Kettledrum is also part of a series of historical fiction by an award-winning writer and scholar of ancient Near Eastern history. Beat the Kettledrum continues the story of Cyrus the Great, the astonishing women beside him, and the rise of the Persian Empire as it brings to life the breathtaking drama of three nations on a collision course into the cusp of a new era.