The setting is 64AD and Rome is burning to the ground. The twenty-seven year old Emperor Nero is blamed for the fire. The truth is that Nero and his friend, Rusticus, battle to save the city and Nero orders his friend to investigate how the fire started. Nero hopes to blame the new religious sect, the Christians. Rusticus’ investigation reveals a complex conspiracy. During his investigation he falls in love with beautiful Camilia, a Christian nurse. The mysterious murder of three senators and th More...

In Nero’s Concert by Don Westenhaver, flames engulf Rome, sparking murder and religious conflict that divides friends. Leading the investigation of the suspicious blaze is Rusticus, a former gladiator who is also now Emperor Nero’s finance minister and close friend. When a woman, Camilia, appears in Rusticus’ office with a death mask found on a Roman Senator, his interest peaks in many ways. Oddly, it seems as though the Senator did not die because of the fire. Someone might have been murdered h More...

"A Nero: Any bloody-minded man, relentless tyrant, or evil-doer of extraordinary cruelty; from the depraved and infamous Roman Emperor C. Claudius Nero." - "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable"

Almost twenty-one centuries after the Great Fire of Rome, most people believe that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. In reality, Nero--who ruled as Emperor between AD 54 and AD 68--played a lyre, and the fiddle as we know it had yet to be invented. Even the historian Tacitus More...