By Linda Root

ISBN-10: 1482303620

ISBN-13: 9781482303629

Whilst Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, surrenders at Carberry Hill to Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, she is already significantly pregnant. below the phrases of her hand over Kirkcaldy offers that Bothwell can be authorised to go away the conflict box and the queen should be detained at Holyrood Palace till she involves her senses and repudiates the guy who many Scots think about the mastermind in the back of the assassination of King Henry Stuart, father of the child Prince James. however the insurgent lairds overlook the negotiated phrases and ship her to the Douglas stronghold at distant Loch Leven. almost immediately thereafter she is pronounced to have miscarried twins. in accordance with rumor, their is still have been fed to hungry gulls. The queen is instructed by way of Morton's henchmen that except she abdicates in prefer of her son and names her treacherous brother James as Regent, she's going to meet an analogous destiny. the subsequent spring she escapes the loch and increases and ambitious military, yet because of useless management and the queen's impetuous nature, the Regent's strength prevails. The queen flees to England anticipating aid from Elizabeth Tudor that doesn't come. Her enemy James Douglas, Earl of Morton, is enthusiastic about rumors from Loch Leven that one of many twins survives. He orders excavations of the rocky shore and launches a look for bairns of the fitting age. Like Herod ahead of him, his seek yields no fruit. Morton may need forgotten the rumors yet for 2 curious stories which gasoline the legend of the Loch. the 1st matters a gorgeous midwife who had fallen sufferer of Morton’s racking. After a rescue by means of Kirkcaldy who has replaced aspects within the fight, she dies in Kirkcaldy’s palms. at the following day he leaves Edinburgh citadel and returns with a wee lass. “Her identify is Daisy and she or he is mine," he announces. His lengthy- discomfort spouse Margaret asks what makes him sure. “She is simply because I say she is.” Margaret is Kirkcaldy’s bursar and will tally calendar months in addition to cash. Daisy’s measurement belies Kirkcaldy’s declare. on the time of her perception, Kirkcaldy nonetheless rode with the Regent's military and have been chasing the queen around the Midlands. 5 years later, after Kirkcaldy has defected to develop into the queen's final champion, he surrenders the ultimate Marian citadel to an English military despatched to help the newly elected Regent Morton, yet Daisy isn't one of the refugees. many years later Morton learns of a Scottish baby at St. Pierre les Dames in Rheims who's hidden in a gap within the chapel ground whilst dignitaries stopover at and fiercely guarded by means of the abbess, Marie Stuart's aunt Renee. The child's identify is Marguerite de Kircaldie however the nuns name her l. a. Belle Ecossaise as a result of her impressive good looks. Morton swears that an avid Calvinist like Kirkcaldy of Grange shouldn't have despatched his lovechild into the clutches of the ultra-Catholics of the home of Guises. Morton asks himself 'What if King James VI has a Frenchified Catholic half-sister residing in a nunnery in France? could she no longer be the king's presumptive heir-—the she-devil Marie Stuart’s spawn conceived of the hated Earl of Bothwell?' may still this kind of baby exist the Regent bold plans for Scotland could be ruined. opposed to the wealthy tapestry of the 16th Century, the midwife’s mystery unravels in a story informed essentially from the perspective of the mysterious Marguerite de Kircaldie, l. a. Belle Ecossaise, and her mum or dad and mentor, the redoubtable abbess Renee de Guise. (The publication used to be brought in November 2012 as The Legend of los angeles Belle Ecossaise, the identify through which the reformist abbess Marguerite de Kircaldie was once known.The genuine Marguerite Kircaldie used to be certainly a Scot of unknown starting place who was once hidden in cellars and gap at Saint Pierre les Dames in the course of her formative years. Her foundation continues to be an unsolved mystery.)

By Tim Powers

ISBN-10: 1930235321

ISBN-13: 9781930235328

Global myth Award–winner Powers (Three Days to by no means) demonstrates an exact keep an eye on of advanced narratives during this reprint of his rollicking and enthralling 1987 novel. Puppeteer John Chandagnac, certain for Jamaica to get better stolen cash from his uncle, turns into Jack Shandy after pirates assault his send and strength him to hitch their group. Shandy's fight to simply accept his new lifestyles grounds the tale for readers, whilst Blackbeard and vodun magicians whisk all people away to dreamlike lands the place the Fountain of teen itself awaits. The chaotic sea battles sing, although from time to time key occasions ensue so speedy that they wander off within the shuffle as Jack attempts to realize the place he's going and what's at stake. This darkish delusion story will allure not only to pirate enthusiasts but in addition to someone who appreciates Powers's expertise for mixing the main not likely components right into a brilliantly cohesive complete.

By Daphne du Maurier

ISBN-10: 0316253510

ISBN-13: 9780316253512

The realm of the glass-blowers has its personal traditions, it's personal language—and its personal ideas. 'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say see you later to every little thing generic, and input a closed world'. yet crashing into this global comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution, opposed to which the kin struggles to survive.

Years later, Sophie Duval finds to her long-lost nephew the tragic tale of a family members of grasp craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on her personal family's story of culture and sorrow, Daphne du Maurier weaves an unforgettable saga of good looks, warfare, and kinfolk.

By Lisa Hilton

ISBN-10: 1782394079

ISBN-13: 9781782394075

The 12 months is 1199, and King Richard the Lionheart is useless, leaving his brother John to inherit either his French and English lands. younger Isabelle of Angoulme is betrothed to the son of her father's enemy, Hugh de Lusignan, and brought to his fort to be knowledgeable, the place she is initiated into the 'Old Religion'. Isabelle is then informed that she is to be married to not Hugh de Lusignan yet to King John of britain, in a posh and treacherous plot to achieve the English succession.

The Lusignans envisage an empire governed via their younger puppet queen, with a view to ultimately oust Christianity and fix the outdated faith to Europe. but if Isabelle takes concerns into her personal palms, passions will rage and dynastic fortunes will upward push and fall.

Set opposed to the bright backdrop of the good political struggles of medieval Europe, The Stolen Queen will pride fanatics of intrigue and experience.

By Gore Vidal

ISBN-10: 0385500750

ISBN-13: 9780385500753

The Golden Age is the concluding quantity in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling Narratives of Empire series-a certain festival of the nationwide adventure from the United States' access into global struggle to the tip of the Korean War.

The Golden Age is Vidal's crowning fulfillment, a colourful tapestry of yankee political and cultural existence from 1939 to 1954, while the epochal occasions of worldwide battle and the chilly warfare remodeled the USA, as soon as and for all, for sturdy or unwell, from a republic into an empire. The sharp-eyed and sympathetic witnesses to those occasions are Caroline Sanford, Washington, D.C., newspaper writer became Hollywood pioneer producer-star, and Peter Sanford, her nephew and writer of the self reliant highbrow magazine the yankee inspiration. They adventure in the beginning hand the masterful maneuvers of Franklin Roosevelt to carry a reluctant country into global warfare , and later, the activities of Harry Truman that devote the state to a decades-long twilight fight opposed to Communism-developments they regard with a marked skepticism, even if they result in an American international empire. The locus of those occasions is Washington, D.C., but the Hollywood movie and the cultural facilities of recent York additionally play major elements. as well as presidents, the particular characters who seem so vividly within the pages of The Golden Age comprise Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, William Randolph Hearst, Dean Acheson, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Alsop, sunrise Powell-and Gore Vidal himself.

The Golden Age bargains up usa background as in basic terms Gore Vidal can, with unmatched penetration, wit, and excessive drama, allied to a classical view of human destiny. it's a excellent leisure that would additionally swap readers' knowing of yankee background and gear.

By Sena Jeter Naslund

ISBN-10: 0060825405

ISBN-13: 9780060825409

Marie Antoinette was once a baby of fourteen whilst her mom, the Empress of Austria, prepared for her to go away her family members and her nation to develop into the spouse of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the long run King of France. Coming of age within the so much public of arenas—eager to be an exceptional spouse and powerful queen—she warmly embraces her followed kingdom and its electorate. She indicates her new husband not anything yet love and encouragement, even though he again and again fails to consummate their marriage and in so doing is not able to offer what she and the folks of France hope so much: a baby and an inheritor to the throne. Deeply dissatisfied and remoted in her personal intimate circle, and except the social lifetime of the court docket, she permits herself to stay blind to the country's starting to be fiscal and political crises, at the same time bad harvests, sour winters, battle accounts, and poverty precipitate uprising and revenge. The younger queen, as soon as liked via the typical people, turns into a objective of scorn, cruelty, and hatred as she, the court's nobles, and the remainder of the royal kinfolk are stuck up within the nightmarish violence of a murderous time known as "the Terror."

With penetrating perception and with wondrous narrative ability, Sena Jeter Naslund deals an intimate, clean, heartbreaking, and dramatic reimagining of this really compelling girl that is going some distance past renowned myth—and she makes a bygone time of tumultuous switch as genuine to us because the one we live in now.

By Lynn Austin

ISBN-10: 1441204938

ISBN-13: 9781441204936

Retail ePub

Harriet Sherwood has continuously loved her grandmother. but if Harriet makes a decision to stick to her footsteps to struggle for social justice, she definitely by no means anticipated her efforts to land her in penitentiary. Nor did she anticipate her early life enemy and infamous institution bully, Tommy O'Reilly, to be the arresting officer.

Languishing in a prison phone, Harriet has lots of time to sift throughout the thoughts of the 3 generations of girls who've preceded her. As each one tale emerges, the energy of her family--and their deep religion within the God of justice and righteousness--brings Harriet to discovery of her personal ambitions and reasons for pursuing them.

By Amanda Scott

ISBN-10: 1480415340

ISBN-13: 9781480415348

Two enemies in the course of the battle of the Roses needs to marry via decree of the conquering king

Proud and lovely woman Alys Wolveston is left with out a protector on the finish of a decisive conflict within the bloody warfare of the Roses. She refuses to just accept Henry Tudor because the valid king; her loyalty is to the past due Richard III and his Queen Anne, her liked foster mom. however the Welsh knight Sir Nicholas Merion prevents Alys from returning domestic and contains her off to London to turn into the King’s ward . . . and, ultimately, Sir Nicholas’s spouse. She refuses to undergo the smug Welsh warrior, plotting along with his enemies and fiercely denying her appeal to him. yet as she involves understand the battle-hardened man’s humor and generosity, and reviews his exciting contact and the relief of his power, she can’t support yet lose her middle to him. Now Alys will locate herself trapped in lethal political intrigues that call for that she choose from love and loyalty to a once-great king.

By Philippa Gregory

ISBN-10: 1416589554

ISBN-13: 9781416589556

From number 1 New York Times bestselling writer Philippa Gregory comes the beautiful first novel of an exhilarating trilogy in regards to the Lacey kin, and the attractive lady on the middle of a power-hungry property prepared to visit any capacity to guard her kin name.
Beatrice Lacey, as strong-minded as she is gorgeous, refuses to comply to the social customs of her time. Destined to lose her history and cherished Wideacre property as soon as she is wed, Beatrice will use any potential essential to shield her ancestral identify. Seduction, betrayal, even murder—Beatrice's ardour is with no apology or judgment of right and wrong. "She is a Lacey of Wideacre," her father warns, "and no matter what she does, in spite of the fact that she behaves, will continuously be fitting." but while Beatrice's scheming turns out approximately to yield her dream, she is haunted by means of the single dwelling one who is aware the level of her plans...and her potential for evil.

Sumptuously set in Georgian England from the "queen of royal fiction" (USA TODAY), Wideacre is extremely gripping, wealthy in texture, and entire of colour and authenticity. it's a saga as impossible to resist in its singular magic as its heroine.

By Amanda Scott

ISBN-10: 1480415219

ISBN-13: 9781480415218

Two daring, self sustaining sisters locate love with noblemen they despise

When her mom and dad passed on to the great beyond and her older brother went lacking in the US, girl Meriel Traherne needed to depart her loved property in Wales to escort her rebellious more youthful sister to a college in France. She had no thought of the risks she may come across during this international land, and she or he definitely by no means anticipated assistance from Sir Anthony Davies, the type of stylish gentleman she had constantly despised. but, because the fragile peace among France and England threatens to break down, based Sir Anthony will shock her by way of saving her existence and perilous to thieve her heart.
 
Six years later, Meriel’s sister, woman Gwyneth, is in her family’s London townhouse whilst her good friend omit Pamela Beckley arrives, begging for aid. Her cousin and mother or father, the Earl of Lyford, refuses to permit Pamela to have a good time her Season in London, and Pamela fears that the it seems that impoverished Earl intends to marry her himself to safe her enormous fortune. Gwyneth vows to do all she will to avoid the smug Earl from reaching his wishes. but if he turns his fabulous attraction on her, Gwyneth is thrown via her personal startling desires—and the surprising consciousness that it’s she, no longer Pamela, whom the Earl intends to marry.