Friday Finds at the Bookstore: A Dangerous Affair by Caro Peacock

Publish Date: January 2009

Format: Paperback 320pp

Synopsis (From the Publisher):

"In Victoria s England, there are perilous intrigues a proper young lady would do well to avoid 

Liberty Lane, still in her early twenties, is doing her best to make a new life for herself in London after being bruised by loss and treachery. But there s no chance for her to settle down as a conventional young lady. First, a disturbingly attractive young politican, Benjamin Disraeli, wants her to use her contacts in the theatre world to find out more about a prima ballerina with a notorious love life called Columbine. He hints that some important interests may be at stake. Then Columbine is murdered in her dressing room, after an on-stage brawl with a younger and less successful dancer, who becomes prime suspect. Liberty is at the center of the investigation because one of her dearest friends, Daniel Suter, is convinced of the girl s innocence and will put his own neck in danger to save her. Liberty s determination to save them from the gallows leads her from the upper reaches of the aristocracy to some of London s lowlife haunts, posing the question: how far would you go to save a friend?

Caro Peacock, the acclaimed author of A Foreign Affair, once again ingeniously blends history, suspense, and adventure, and returns an endearing and exceptional heroine to the fictional fold."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Diamond by Julie Baumgold

Publish Date: December 2010

Format: Paperback 320pp

Synopsis (From the Publisher):

"The Diamond is a brilliant, dazzling historical novel about a famous diamond -- one of the biggest in the world -- that passed from the hands of William Pitt's grandfather to the French kings and Napoleon, linking many of the most famous personalities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and serving as the centerpiece for a novel in every way as fascinating as Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover or Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

Rich with historical detail, characters, and nonstop drama, the story centers on the famous Regent diamond -- once the largest and most beautiful diamond in the world -- which was discovered in India in the late seventeenth century and bought by the governor of the East India Company, a cunning nabob, trader, and ex-pirate named Thomas Pitt. His son brought it to London, where a Jewish diamond-cutter of genius took two years to fashion it into one of the world's greatest gems.

After hawking it around the courts of Europe, Pitt sold the diamond to Louis XIV's profligate and deeply amoral nephew, the Duc d'Orléans. Raised to glory by this fortune, Pitt's grandsons would rule England and devote their lives to fighting the very Bourbon kings who wore their diamond, the enduring symbol of the rivalry between France and England.

The diamond was worn by Louis XIV, Louis XV, and by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. A beautiful blond whore placed it in her private parts to entice Czar Peter the Great on his visit to Paris. A band of thieves stole it during the bloodiest days of the Revolution. Found in an attic, it was pawned for horses for Napoleon's first campaigns. Napoleon redeemed the diamond and, though his wife Josephine craved it, set it in the hilt of his sword, where it appeared in many of his portraits. After his fall, his young second wife, Marie-Louise, grabbed it when she fled France. The Régent was hidden in innumerable secret places, used by Napoleon III and the ravishing Empress Eugenie to impress Queen Victoria, and finally ended up on display in the Louvre museum, where it remains today, then and now the first diamond of France.

Julie Baumgold, herself the descendant of a family of diamond merchants, tells this extraordinary story through Count Las Cases (author of Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène), who writes it in his spare time while in exile with Napoleon I. The book is in Las Cases's words, those of a clever, sophisticated nobleman at home in the old regime as well as in Napoleon's court. As he tells his story, with Napoleon prodding, challenging, and correcting him all the while, they draw closer. The emperor has a kind of love/hate relationship with the diamond, which represents the wealth and fabulous elegance of the French courts as well as the power for good or evil that possessing it confers on its transient masters. He thinks of it as his good luck charm, but is it? For the diamond has its dark side -- murder, melancholy, and downfall ever shadow its light.

A glittering cast of characters parades through The Diamond: a mesmerizing Napoleon and the devoted Las Cases, stuck on Saint Helena with their memories; Louis XIV and his brother, the dissolute Monsieur; Madame, the German princess who married Monsieur; the Scottish financier John Law and Saint-Simon, who sold Pitt's diamond to Madame's depraved son; the depressed Louis XV; and Madame de Pompadour. Here too are the families, the Pitts in England and the Bonapartes in France; the men of Saint Helena; nobles and thieves; Indian diamond merchants and financiers -- nearly everyone of interest and importance from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth century.

Written with enormous verve and ambition, The Diamond is a treat, a plum pudding of a novel filled with one delicious, funny, disgraceful episode after another. It is grand history and even grander fiction -- a towering work of imagination, research, and narrative skill."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The First Princess of Wales by Karen Harper

Publish Date: 2006

Format: Paperback 624pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

"The daughter of a disgraced earl, she matched wits with a prince.

It is the fourteenth century, the height of the Medieval Age, and at the court of King Edward III of England, chivalry is loudly praised while treachery runs rampant. When the lovely and high-spirited Joan of Kent is sent to this politically charged court, she is woefully unprepared for the underhanded maneuverings of her peers.

Determined to increase the breadth of his rule, the king will use any means necessary to gain control of France—including manipulating his own son, Edward, Prince of Wales. Joan plots to become involved with the prince to scandalize the royal family, for she has learned they engineered her father’s downfall and death. But what begins as a calculated strategy soon—to Joan’s surprise—grows into love. When Joan learns that Edward returns her feelings, she is soon fighting her own, for how can she love the man that ruined her family? And, if she does, what will be the cost?

Filled with scandal, court intrigue, and prominent figures of the Medieval Age, The First Princess of Wales has at its center a wonderful love story, which is all the more remarkable because it is true. Karen Harper’s compelling, fast-paced novel tells the riveting tale of an innocent girl who marries a prince and gives birth to a king."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Mercy Seller by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

Publish Date: April 2008

Format: Paperback 448pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

"In the fifteenth century, with religious intolerance spreading like wildfire across Europe, Englishwoman Anna Bookman and her grandfather, Finn, earn a living in Prague by illuminating precious books---including forbidden translations of the Bible. As their secret trade grows ever more hazardous, Finn urges Anna to seek sanctuary in England. Her passage abroad, however, will be anything but easy.

Meanwhile, a priest in London, Brother Gabriel, dutifully obeys church doctrine by granting pardons . . . for a small fee. But when he is sent to France in disguise to find the source of the banned manuscripts finding their way to England, he meets Anna, who has set up a temporary stall as a bookseller. She has no way of knowing that the rich merchant frequenting her stall is actually a priest---just as he does not know that he has met the woman for whom he will renounce his church.

It is only in England, which is far from the safe harbor once imagined, that their dangerous secrets will be revealed."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

Publish Date: September

Format: Hardcover 463pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

"In a time of fear and danger, they were determined to live a life of beauty and grace . . . 

When she decides to auction her remarkable jewelry collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi ballet, believes she has drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the aged dancer finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland and of the events—both glorious and heartbreaking—that changed the course of her life half a century before. 

It was in Russia that she discovered the magic of the theatre; that she fell in love with the poet Viktor Elsin; that she and her dearest companions—Gersh, a dangerously irreverent composer, and the exquisite Vera, Nina’s closest friend—became victims of Stalinist aggression; that a terrible discovery led to a deadly act of betrayal—and to an ingenious escape that eventually brought her to the city of Boston. 

Nina has hidden her dark secrets for half a lifetime. But two people will not let the past rest—Drew Brooks, an inquisitive young associate director at the Boston auction house, and a Russian professor named Grigori Solodin who believes that a unique set of amber jewels may hold the key to his own ambiguous past. Together, these unlikely partners find themselves unraveling a literary mystery whose answers will hold life-changing consequences for them all. 

Artfully interweaving past and present, Moscow and New England, the behind-the-scenes tumult of theatre life and the transformative power of art, Daphne Kalotay’s luminous debut novel, an ingeniously plotted page turner of the highest literary order, captures the joy, uncertainty, and terror of lives powerless to withstand the forces of history, while affirming that even in the presence of evil, suspicion, and fear the human spirit reaches for transcendence and love."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Gentleman Poet by Kathryn Johnson

Pub. Date: September 2010

Format: Paperback 319pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

"En route to the Americas in 1609, Elizabeth Persons, a young servant girl, sees her blinding headache as an ominous sign. Sure enough, a hurricane during the final leg of their journey tosses the ill-fated Sea Venture and its one hundred and fifty passengers and crew onto the dreaded shores of the Bermudas, the rumored home of evil spirits and dangerous natives. In the months that pass—time marked by grave hardship, mutiny, adventure, danger . . . and a blossoming love between Elizabeth and the wrecked ship's young cook—she despairs of their ever being rescued. But she finds hope and strength in a remarkable new friendship, forming a fast bond with the Sea Venture's historian, a poet traveling under the name of William Strachey. But Will is more than he seems. To many back home in England, he is known by a different name: Shakespeare. And he sees in their great shared travails the makings of a magical, truly transcendent work of theater."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: A Family Affair by Caro Peacock

Pub date: June 2010

Format: Paperback 464 pp

Synopsis (From the Publisher):

"At the request of Queen Victoria's prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Liberty Lane is dispatched to Brinkburn Hall in search of answers. The deranged aristocrat Lord Brinkburn is nearing death, with his elder son, Stephen, eagerly waiting to inherit his title—until Lady Brinkburn's startling announcement that the heir is illegitimate. Chaos ensues.

The rivalry between Stephen and his younger brother, Miles, heats up dangerously. Liberty's arrival only stirs an already volatile mix, and she is greeted soon after by the odd disappearance of one brother . . . and by a shocking murder within the family's circle. Secrets and scandal run rampant throughout the cold and loveless Buckinghamshire estate far from the polish of London's aristocracy—as the plucky young investigator races to separate truth from falsehood, villains from victims, before death takes up a more permanent residence."

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: Bedlam, The Furthur Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte by Laura Joh Rowland

Publish date: May 2010

Format: Hardcover 352pp

Synopsis: (From the Publusher)

Following the notable debut of The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë, beloved author Laura Joh Rowland offers her legions of fans the next installment in the Charlotte Brontë mystery series... with more to come. On her last escapade, Charlotte unintentionally witnessed a murder and found herself embroiled in a dangerous chain of events. Now, Charlotte returns in a stunning sequel that takes the reader into the most sinister institution in London: Bedlam.

With the death of her siblings and far from home, Charlotte has few people to trust. Struggling with romantic entanglements and her stressful rise to prominence on the literary scene, she is more alone than ever. On a visit to London, Charlotte goes on a tour of London's most famous hospital for the mad, Bedlam. She is sure she recognizes a struggling Mr. Slade, her long-missing ex-lover, strapped to one of the stretchers. Charlotte starts digging, and soon finds herself trying to reveal a secret that high-powered men would (and do) kill to protect. It is up to Charlotte to find the truth and expose a plot of global proportion. But what if the conspirators get to her first?

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis

Pub. Date: May 2005

Format: Paperback, 528pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

Vivacious Sancha of Aragon arrives in Rome newly wed to a member of the notorious Borgia dynasty. Surrounded by the city's opulence and political corruption, she befriends her glamorous and deceitful sister-in-law, Lucrezia, whose jealousy is as legendary as her beauty. Some say Lucrezia has poisoned her rivals, particularly those to whom her handsome brother, Cesare, has given his heart. So when Sancha falls under Cesare's irresistible spell, she must hide her secret or lose her life. Caught in the Borgias' sinister web, she summons her courage and uses her cunning to outwit them at their own game. Vividly interweaving historical detail with fiction, The Borgia Bride is a richly compelling tale of conspiracy, sexual intrigue, loyalty, and drama.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: White Rose Rebel by Janet Paisley

Pub date: March 2008

Format: Hardcover 40pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

White Rose Rebel tells the riveting and turbulent story of the historical figure known as "Colonel Anne"--Scottish heroine and female "Braveheart"--who risked everything for the love of her country and its rightful king.

Anne Farquharson, a tempestuous and independentminded daughter of Scotland, is elated when the Jacobites rebel in 1745, fighting to regain the Stuart throne of Scotland for Bonnie Prince Charlie, and horrified when her husband, Aeneas Macintosh, joins the English army. She raises his clan and, with her previous lover at her side, joins the uprising to become its legendary "Colonel Anne." Incorporating fascinating historical detail about the military role of Scottish women during the eighteenth century, Janet Paisley creates a marvelously entertaining tale of this extraordinary young woman who used her heart, sexuality, intellect, and sword to defend her people.

Rich in intrigue and period detail and with a compelling cast of characters certain to captivate fans of Philippa Gregory, White Rose Rebel marks the exciting debut of a wonderfully fresh and vivid voice in historical fiction, as it explores the grand themes of civil war, women's rights and national identity, love and marital discord, loyalty and betrayal.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Firemaster's Mistress by Christie Dickason

Pub. Date: September 2008 (In Stores Now)

Format: Paperback, 544pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)
England in the early reign of James I: an unsteady nation adapts to its new king; Shakespeare labors over the tragedies of Othello and Macbeth; bearbaiting is a popular diversion . . . and Guy Fawkes, with a small group of desperate men, hatches a terrifying plot to assassinate the king and all of Parliament by explosion.

Francis Quoynt is a firemaster who would rather make fireworks than war. Kate Peach is a poor glovemaker and a mistress to the powerful Hugh Taylor, who is forced to hide her Catholicism as she spends her days looking out on noisy, teeming London streets crowded with prostitutes and drunks.

Once Francis and Kate were lovers before the firemaster abandoned her and the plague destroyed her family. Now they will meet again—as enemies—caught up in the maelstrom of treachery and violence surrounding Fawkes's malevolent plot. In the midst of chaos and madness, the flame of their romance will be dangerously rekindled, as their lives and the London they know are changed forever.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Lady and the Poet by Maeve Haran

Pub date: March 2010 (In Stores Now)

Format: Hardback 384 pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

Set against the sumptuousness and intrigues of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, this powerful novel reveals the untold love affair between the famous poet John Donne and Ann More, the passionate woman who, against all odds, became his wife.

Ann More, fiery and spirited daughter of the Mores of Loseley House in Surrey, came to London destined for a life at the court of Queen Elizabeth and an advantageous marriage. There she encountered John Donne, the darkly attractive young poet who was secretary to her uncle, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He was unlike any man she had ever met—angry, clever, witty, and in her eyes, insufferably arrogant and careless of women. Yet as they were thrown together, Donne opened Ann’s eyes to a new world of passion and sensuality.

But John Donne—Catholic by background in an age when it was deadly dangerous, tainted by an alluring hint of scandal—was the kind of man her status-conscious father distrusted and despised.

The Lady and the Poet tells the story of the forbidden love between one of our most admired poets and a girl who dared to rebel against her family and the conventions of her time. They gave up everything to be together and their love knew no bounds.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore

Pub date: May 2007 (In Stores Now)

Format: Paperback 400 pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

Beautiful and brilliant, Eleanor is the daughter of the duke of Aquitaine, whose glittering court is the twelfth-century birthplace of courtly love. For all of the duke’s boasts that Eleanor has the brains of a man and the soul of a warrior, everyone knows that a girl of fifteen cannot possibly hold the richest dukedom in France. Everyone, that is, except her dying father, who insists on leaving Eleanor his most valuable provinces---and making her prey to the first baron who rides in to kidnap her.

Eleanor, though, is not content to sit idly by and let herself become a victim, and devises a plan to marry the heir to the throne of France. While her alliance to Louis VII may be a dazzling one, her husband is a cautious man whose wit and courage do not always match Eleanor’s own, and she ultimately finds herself seeking an even greater match with Henry II of England. Sweeping from the courts of Paris to the perils of the Crusades, Duchess of Aquitaine gloriously illuminates the life of one of the most powerful, resourceful, and fascinating women in all of history.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore....One Day Later

Pub. Date: July 2007 (In Stores Now)
Format: Paperback, 288pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

Regency heiress Philomena Wellesley-Clegg has rather strong opinions about men and clothing. As to the former, so far two lords, a viscount, and a mad poet have fallen far short of her expectations. But she is about to meet Inigo Linsley, an unshaven, wickedly handsome man with a scandalous secret. He's nothing she ever dreamed she'd want—why then can she not stop thinking about how he looks in his breeches?

A delightful marriage of Pride and Prejudice with Bridget Jones's Diary, Janet Mullany's The Rules of Gentility transports us to the days before designer shoes, apple martinis, and speed dating—when great bonnets, punch at Almack's, and the marriage mart were in fashion—and captivates us with a winsome heroine who learns that some rules in society are made to be broken.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett

Pub. Date: March 2010 (In Stores Now)
Format: Paperback, 475pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

Two sisters discover passion during the War of the Roses—one in the arms of the king, the other in the world of silk

From the author of the acclaimed novel Portrait of an Unknown Woman comes an epic tale of love and intrigue. The year is 1471. Edward IV, who won the throne with the help of his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is restoring law and order after years of war. Under Edward IV, life in England begins to improve. Business is booming once more and the printing and silk industries prosper in London.

When silk merchant John Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters, their fortunes are forever changed. Elder daughter Jane Shore begins a notorious liaison with the king while industrious and clever Isabel finds herself married into the house of Claver, a wealthy silk dynasty. Fate delivers Isabel a challenge when her new husband is killed and she is forced into apprenticeship to her mother-in-law, Alice Claver.

It is from Alice Claver that Isabel learns to love silk and the exotic and passionate fabrics from Italy, Persia, Spain, Tunisia, and beyond. Isabel learns to make her way in this new world of silk—to find friends and enemies—and she strikes an alliance with her sister's lover, King Edward IV, that will bring the secrets of silk-making to London. As Isabel grows in power and her plan for a silk industry run by Englishwomen is set into motion, the political landscape shifts in dangerous ways. One sister will fall as the other rises and choices must be made that will change their lives forever.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Sonnets by Warwick Collins

Pub. Date: October 2009 (In Stores Now)
Format: Paperback, 272pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

No one knows for sure precisely when and where Shakespeare wrote his sonnets or, more intriguingly, who he wrote them for. This wonderfully entertaining novel imagines the circumstances that inspired 30 of the Bard's most popular sonnets. The young Will Shakespeare is living under the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. The controversial earl is under pressure from his family and those close to the royal court to settle down but he is far too busy drinking, carousing, and cavorting with his motley band of acquaintances to pay attention. Not then the obvious setting for poetic genius but within the politics (both state and sexual) of this lofty household Will finds lots to inspire his pen, and a few attractive distractions too. With 30 sonnets interwoven into the text in seamless fashion, this clever tale crafted from fragments of history wears its scholarship lightly and its love of Shakespeare and poetry proudly.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Serpent in the Garden by Janet Gleeson

 

Pub. Date: February 2005 (In bookstores now)
Format: Paperback, 352pp

I love it when your walking through the bookstore and you find a book that you remember reading and enjoying years ago. I read this book when it was first published in 2005. As far as I can remember, it was a really good book that I read in record time. There was one gruesome spot that I can recall, but the rest of the book made up for it. This book was a very fast paced read with a plot that was full of twists and just when you think you have it all figured out...

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

She opened the shagreen box. Couched in gray silk was an emerald necklace, one he had not seen for twenty years. The stones were just as he recalled them: a dozen or more, baguette cut and set in gold links, with a single ruby at the center. Flashes of verdigris, orpiment, and Prussian blue sparkled in the candlelight. The form of this necklace was as disturbing as ever. It had nearly cost him his life.

It is the summer of 1765. The renowned and exquisitely dressed portrait painter Joshua Pope accepts a commission to paint the wedding portrait of Herbert Bentnick and his fiancée, Sabine Mercer, to whom Bentnick has become engaged less than a year after the death of his first wife. Joshua has barely begun the portrait when a man's body is found in the conservatory. A few days later, Sabine's emerald necklace disappears, and Bentnick accuses Joshua of theft. The painter is suddenly fighting not only for his reputation but for his life. With a sure understanding of period detail and character, Janet Gleeson creates a richly nuanced tale of greed and revenge that plays out in the refined landscapes and dark streets of eighteenth-century London.

---------------

Sunday Finds at the Bookstore is going to be posted on Friday's from now on, and of course the title will be changed to FRIDAY Finds at the Bookstore. "Why the change" you might ask...well I am just starting a new weekly event called Suddenly Sunday and so it has of course taken the Sunday spot of my blog. If you want to view the first Suddenly Sunday post and see what it's all about, you may view it here: Suddenly Sunday.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn

 

 Pub. Date: January 2008 (in stores now)

Format: Paperback, 336pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)

A gripping novel of love, passion, betrayal, and heartbreak in the unstable Tudor court following the death of King Henry VIII

Clever, level-headed Katherine Parr has suffered through four years of marriage to the aging and irascible King Henry VIII—and she has survived, unlike the five wives who came before her. But less than a year after the old king's death, her heart is won by the dashing Thomas Seymour, and their hasty union undoes a lifetime of prudent caution.
An unwilling witness to the queen's late-blossoming love, Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, harbors nagging suspicions of Kate's handsome and ambitious new husband. But as Catherine is drawn deeper into the web of politics ensnaring her oldest friend, it gradually becomes clear that she has her own dark tale to tell. For though Thomas might betray his wife for power, Catherine might betray her for passion, risking everything she has in a world where love is a luxury not even royalty can easily afford.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: In Lucia's Eyes by Arthur Japin

 Published 2007 (In Bookstores now)

I am usually not a big Casanova fan but the cover completely sucked me in on this one!

Synopsis:  (From the Publisher)
Amsterdam 1758, and a man is artfully seducing a woman. He is, to all appearances, Monsieur le Chevalier de Seingalt, a French government envoy selling shares to the Dutch; she is a courtesan, wellknown in Amsterdam for the fact that she never removes her veil. He sets her a challenge: if she can find a woman who has suffered after falling in love with him, she is entitled to resist his charms; if not, she should succumb. What Seingalt doesn't know is that he has already met the veiled woman many years ago, in another life. What Lucia doesn’t know is that Seingalt will go down in history as one of
the world’s greatest lovers, Casanova. The inspiration for this perfectly plotted, wonderfully romantic historical novel lies in Casanova’s memoirs, and a tiny reference to the woman he fell in love with at seventeen, but later met, hideously disfigured, in an Amsterdam brothel. Arthur Japin has expanded this anecdote into a deliciously entertaining and moving story of innocence and experience, love and sacrifice - all seen through eyes of the woman who first broke Casanova’s heart. His cunning narrative takes the reader on an entrancing journey from the canals of Amsterdam to those of Venice, painting a glorious portrait of the eighteenth century with all its contradictions of reason and instinct, wit and sensuality, head and heart.

Friday Finds at the Bookstore: The Lute Player by Norah Lofts

Pub Date: Dec 2009 (In stores now)

Format: Paperback, 592pp

Synopsis: (From the Publisher)
Beloved author Norah Lofts brings to life the romance and adventure of the crusading king Richard the Lionhearted through the eyes of his most humble and trusted companion — his lute player.

One of the most renowned figures in medieval history, Richard the Lionhearted, inspired by a vision of the Holy Land, led his knights onto the battlefields of the Third Crusade. During the years of fighting and intrigue, Richard's life was intertwined with the lives of two strong, vibrant, and drastically different women who loved him — Berengaria, princess of Navarre, and his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. While his marriage to Berengaria was ill-fated, Eleanor loved her son with a frantic, possessive pride. But it is Blondel, the king's lute player, who here steps forward from the shadows to tell this tale of romance, war, and betrayal.
In her trademark style, Norah Lofts paints a complex and human portrait of a legendary king.

 ~Originally Published in 1951~