The Black Arrow

First published in 1888, "The Black Arrow" (AKA The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses) is a historical adventure novel and a romance novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. This exciting adventure story is full of intrigue, suspense, hair-breadth escapes, and desperate fights, but It also contains an unusual love story. "The Black Arrow" offers valuable insights into history and rates among the best novels available about the fifteenth-century English civil conflict, the War of the Roses.

Originally serialized in a periodical of boys' adventure fiction, "The Black Arrow" is a swashbuckling portrait of a young man's journey to discover the heroism within himself. Young Dick Shelton, caught in the midst of England's War of the Roses, finds his loyalties torn between the guardian who will ultimately betray him and the leader of a secret fellowship, The Black Arrow. As Shelton is drawn deeper into this conspiracy, he must distinguish friend from foe and confront war, shipwreck, revenge, murder, and forbidden love, as England's crown threatens to topple around him.