The House of Niccolò extends much further geographically to take in the important urban centers of Bruges, Venice, Florence, Geneva, and the Hanseatic League; Burgundy, Flanders, and Poland; Iceland; the Iberian Peninsula and Madeira; the Black Sea cities of Trebizond and Caffa; Persia; the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Rhodes; Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula; and West Africa and the city of Timbuktu.
The eight volumes of The House of Niccolò are part of what Dunnett viewed as a larger fourteen-volume work, which includes the six novels of the Lymond Chronicles series.
On the first page of the first book in the series, the central character is introduced as Claes, a large, cheerful, goodnatured eighteen-year-old dyer's apprentice, in whose wake trouble and upsets of the most grand and hilarious kind often follow.
Of unfortunate birth, Claes was taken in by relatives-by-marriage of his mother's after she died, and has been raised as an apprentice and sometime companion to the son and heir of the Charretty company in Bruges.
It soon becomes apparent that Claes, or Nicholas, who at the time goes by the last name van der Poele, is a polymath and polyglot, and is turning himself into a leader of men and player of great games.
Sultan Mehmed responds in the summer of 1461: a fleet under his admiral Kassim Pasha sails along the Black Sea coast of Anatolia towards Trebizond while he leads an army from Bursa eastward.
Set largely in Cyprus, during the wars between Queen Carlotta and her half-brother James de Lusignan (Zacco) for control of the island kingdom.
Set largely in Venice, Portugal, Madeira, and Mali, during a voyage to discover the source of West African gold, and a West-East route to the Christian Ethiopian kingdom of Prester John.
These books provide background information to historical characters and events featured in the Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolò, as well as explanations of classical allusions and literary and other quotations used in the two series, notes to sources of these citations, and many maps.