Read some quality historical fiction today!

I found out big news today: Robert Merle's Fortune de France series, one of the great reading adventures of my youth, is finally being published in English! I wanted to share this with you English-speaking readers, and make a case for adding this book to your shelves.
Not too long ago I wrote a post about 6 Books that Need an English Translation a.s.a.p. My prayers (or whining?) seem to have been answered, and Pushkin Press is proudly presenting us the first volume of one of them this September: Robert Merle's The Brethren.
Fortunes of France (or, as I knew it growing up, French History) is a captivating, exciting and adventurous series of historical fiction that takes place in late Medieval France. The whole series is 13 volumes long, enough to take you through several decades of turbulent 16th century French history, and well into the early 17th century, the world of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu so well-known from... other books. In the midst of struggle between royal houses, religions, and nations, our hero Pierre de Siorac works his way through France (and most of the lovely ladies of his time). Adventures, gallantry, some plague, lots of rapier fighting, complicated politics, generous amounts of love, dark tones, likeable characters, and a quite accurate picture of life in those times makes these books an experience that stays with you permanently.

This is not really a book review. The books have been out for a while, they are a proven classic, and people who have read them already know that they are amazing. Hopefully they will be even more popular now that they are available for the English-speaking bookworm crowd.

(...Who am I kidding? I am willing to hit you over the head until you read them.)