In publishing, the trade category of coffee-table books refers to those large books with plenty of pictures, usually colorful ones.

When I wrote the three epic fantasy novels pictured above, I found coffee-table books to be useful. I was working within a medievalist setting, so I was reading as much medieval history as I could. I favor the academic monographs and the living history texts as the sources for my understanding of the period, and I also learned a lot from various textbooks, especially the series published by the Cambridge University Press. The knowledge informed my versions of the militaries, economies, and governments. But the pictures in the coffee-table books helped me to visualize what my various settings would look like.

Yet as I turned recently to the bittersweet task of culling books from my personal library, I decided that I would part with many of the coffee-table books. So, so many books have since departed on their journeys to the nearest Goodwill store. In the list below, I share the ones whose futures I am still debating because they are so spectacular and, therefore, the hardest to let go of:

Cistercian Abbeys: History and Architecture, by Henri Gaud and Jean-François Leroux-Dhuys

Castles, by Charles W.C. Oman

Castles in Italy: The Medieval Life of Noble Families, by Clemente Manenti and Marcus Bollen

Castles of the World, by Phyllis G. Jestice

The English Castle, by François Matarasso

English Castles, by R. Allen Brown

The English Village, by Richard Muir

An Introduction to Heraldry, by Stefan Oliver

Knight: The Warrior and the World of Chivalry, by Robert Jones

Life in the Castle in Medieval England, by John Burke

Medieval Britain: The Age of Chivalry, by Lloyd and Jennifer Laing

The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black

Medieval Warfare, by H. W. Koch

Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, by Ruchard Barber and Juliet Barker

What Life Was Like in the Age of Chivalry, by the editors of Time-Life Books