91 BC — A forgotten well in an old olive grove somewhere along the Via Aurelia

Still seething after a volatile parley with rebellious Italic tribes, General Sulla whirls at the sound of footsteps—only to find Helena, a naïve teenager in search of water. Pressing a dagger to her throat, he twists the moment into prophecy: he the might of Rome and she the vulnerable clans who occupy the fertile land he covets. Underestimating her dormant brilliance, he turns her into his audience while rehearsing the senatorial speech he will deliver to ignite the Social War—a conflict he knows will consume thousands of lives in service of his greed.

Longing to escape her brutal existence in the grove, Helena accepts Sulla’s offer to travel, convinced that whatever “Rome” is, it cannot be worse than what she leaves behind. She is wrong. Abandoned in a secret villa and cast among slaves, she finally grasps the general’s true intentions.

Trapped between certain abuse if she stays and likely death if she flees, Helena must learn to navigate the city’s vicious undercurrents before Sulla returns from crushing Rome’s defiant eastern provinces. Caecilia, the villa’s formidable senior slave, tutors her in the ways of polite Roman society, while Helena uses her keen instincts to become the eyes and ears of Demophon, Sulla’s crippled spymaster. When Demophon is crucified and Caecilia savagely scourged for protecting the young woman they have grown to love, Helena’s resolve hardens into vengeance.

Claiming borrowed prestige, Helena becomes engaged to the son of Gaius Marius, Sulla’s greatest enemy, gaining access to sprawling estates in distant Hispania. There, she plunges into the lethal world of illicit trade—black-market barons, criminal collegia, and pirate fleets—while orchestrating the impossible movement of cargo across the fractured republic.

Driven by a singular obsession to destroy the man who made her a pawn, Helena uses her stolen wealth—and Sulla’s own remembered words—to spark a web of corruption that forces him to march his army on Rome, ignites the civil war that fractures the Republic, and ushers in the violent birth of the Roman Empire.

‘A Social War is more than a tale of rebellion—it is the story of a heart that refuses to break even as nations do. Perfect for readers who savor Robert Harris’s political precision, Madeline Miller’s lyrical myth-making, and Conn Iggulden’s sweeping historical power, this is an unforgettable journey through courage, ambition, and the devastating cost of empire.’