But merchant Janyn Perrers is a good and loving husband and Alice soon learns to enjoy her marriage. Until a messenger brings news of his disappearance and she discovers that her husband had many secrets, secrets he didn't want her to know - but which have now put a price on her own head and that of her beloved daughter. Brought under the protection of King Edward III and Queen Philippa, she must dutifully embrace her fate once more - as a virtual prisoner at Court. And when the king singles her out for more than just royal patronage, she knows she has little choice but to accept his advances. But obeying the king brings with it many burdens as well as pleasures, as she forfeits her good name to keep her daughter free from hurt. Still a young woman and guided by her intellect and good business sense, she learns to use her gifts as wisely as she can. But as one of the king's favourites, she brings jealousy and hatred in her wake and some will stop at nothing to see her fall from grace.

    But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.The story's shocking twists and turns, augmented with real, sinister period photos, will make this dazzling, #1 New York Times bestselling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco impossible to forget.

    Her father is Henry II, the king of England and a renowned military leader. She loves them both, so what is she to do when she's forced to choose between them? As her parents' arguments grow ever more vicious, Joan begins to feel like a political pawn.When her parents marry her off to the king of Sicily, Joan finds herself stuck with a man ten years her senior. She doesn't love her husband, and she can't quite forget her childhood crush, the handsome Lord Raymond.As Joan grows up, she begins to understand that her parents' worldview is warped by their political ambitions, and hers, in turn, has been warped by theirs. Is it too late to figure out whom to trust? And, more importantly, whom to love?The Queen's Daughter is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    . .Fifteenth-century Rome: The Borgia family is on the rise. Lucrezia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, places his illegitimate daughter and her only brothers, Cesare, Giovanni, and Goffredo, in the jeweled splendor—and scandal—of his court. From the Pope’s affairs with adolescent girls to Cesare’s dangerous jealousy of anyone who inspires Lucrezia’s affections to the ominous birth of a child conceived in secret, no Borgia can elude infamy.Young Lucrezia gradually accepts her fate as she comes to terms with the delicate nature of her relationships with her father and brothers. The unbreakable bond she shares with them both exhilarates and terrifies her as her innocence begins to fade. Soon she will understand that her family’s love pales next to their quest for power and that she herself is the greatest tool in their political arsenal. From the inimitable pen of Jean Plaidy, this family’s epic legend is replete with passion, intrigue, and murder—and it’s only the beginning.

    The youngest is only ten years old, but this doesn't stop the guards from hauling them off to the Tower of London. There they await a grim fate, as child-king Richard II is executing anyone who poses a threat to his throne. Delia is their only hope for pardon and freedom.Sir Geoffrey did not expect his first assignment as captain of the guard to be the arrest of boys so young. He dutifully imprisons the brothers, but he can't ignore the sense, rooted in personal experience, that injustice and treachery are at work.Determined to rescue her brothers, Delia secures a position as a seamstress for the queen. Her quest is all but impossible as the executions continue. Sir Geoffrey offers to be her ally, but should she trust him in a court where everyone has an agenda?From New York Times bestselling author Melanie Dickerson comes a tender retelling of The Wild Swans, where the virtues of loyalty and love face a harrowing showdown with power and fear.

    However, like most women in fourteenth-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret’s scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness. Married off at the age of fourteen to a merchant reputed to be the Devil himself, Margaret was left for dead during the Black Plague. Incredibly, she survived, was apprenticed to an herbalist, and became a midwife. But most astonishing of all, Margaret has experienced a Mystic Union—a Vision of Light that endows her with the miraculous gift of healing. Because of this ability, Margaret has become suddenly different—to her tradition-bound parents, to the bishop’s court that tries her for heresy, and ultimately to the man who falls in love with her.

     1497, Renaissance Rome: As the teenage daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia Borgia is a young noblewoman immersed in all the glamor of the Vatican Palace. Yet after a brutal killing shocks the city, Lucrezia learns that a dark truth lies beneath the surface of the Papal Court: in their ruthless quest for power, her father and brother are willing to poison their enemies. Her family are murderers. After discovering that her new husband is next to die, Lucrezia struggles to help him escape from Rome before the assassins strike. Against a barrage of political intrigues, papal spies, and diabolical tricks, Lucrezia uses all her wits to defy her family and save her husband from assassination. But as tragedy looms ever closer, and her plans gradually fail, she finds herself confronting an enemy far more sinister than she ever imagined… INCLUDED INSIDE: - An exclusive excerpt of M. G. Scarsbrook's novel THE MARLOWE CONSPIRACY, an historical thriller set in Elizabethan England, featuring Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare teaming-up to expose a high-level government conspiracy!

    Liza’s midwifery skills are needed by the inhabitants of Hollingham. Knowing this keeps the lonely old woman going, together with the occasional ‘trip’ to her long dead husband and children. But she makes one mistake, and the villagers begin to suspect she is using occult spells to harm them. She tries desperately to regain their trust, but time is running short. Rosalind, rich, lonely and naïve, wants to experience true love and falls in love with a monk, by whom she conceives a child. Liza and the Lady Isabella, Rosalind’s mother, must pick up the pieces. None of the three women will ever be the same again.LIZA is the first book in the MIDWIFE series, which tells the story of midwives, women and childbirth in England from medieval to modern times. Author's note - This book was previously titled 'MIDWYF: LISA'. The cover still contains the old title because I like the medieval spelling, but the 'official' title brings the book into line with the series. MIDWIFE: BEATRIX, set in Hollingham and London in the 1630s, is due to be published early 2013. Valerie Levy holds a PhD in Midwifery Studies from the University of Sheffield. She has published in many professional, peer reviewed journals, and co-edited the ‘Midwifery Practice’ series of textbooks, which are still in use worldwide. Now retired, Valerie lives in France with her husband.

    Born to a peasant herbalist, she is taken to nearby Middleham Castle by the Countess of Warwick, in the same way we might adopt a puppy. Here she serves as poppet and companion to the Earl of Warwick's second daughter, Anne. Here she also meets Duke Richard, Edward IV's youngest brother, who is undergoing knightly training. The children form a long lasting relationship which caries them into adulthood."Roan Rose" illuminates a lively, brutal medieval world. The painful pushes and pulls of a friendship unequal in rank, the balancing of the needs of those whom she serves against the claims of her family are Rose's tragic dilemma.

    Was she the heartless seductress of legend? Or merely an unsuspecting pawn in a familial web, forced to choose between loyalty and her own survival?Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias became Italy’s most ruthless and powerful family, electrifying and terrorizing their 15th-century Renaissance world.To this day, Lucrezia Borgia is known as one of history’s most notorious villainesses, accused of incest and luring men to doom with her arsenal of poison.International bestselling author C.W. Gortner’s new novel delves beyond the myth to depict Lucrezia in her own voice, from her pampered childhood in the palaces of Rome to her ill-fated, scandalous arranged marriages and complex relationship with her adored father and her rival brothers—brutal Juan and enigmatic Cesare.This is the dramatic, untold story of a papal princess who came of age in an era of savage intrigue and unparalleled splendor, and whose courage led her to overcome the fate imposed on her by her Borgia blood.

    But small towns have long memories, and when a new string of murders occurs, all signs point to the daughter of a murderer. Only one person believes Valentine is innocent—Rowan Blackshaw, the son of the man her mother killed all those years ago. Valentine vows to find the real killer, but when she finally uncovers the horrifying truth, she must choose to face her own dark secrets, even if it means losing Rowan in the end.

    In the middle of the conflict is a most unlikely heroine. For Margery, the beautiful and spirited ward of Warwick the Kingmaker, freedom is the only prize worth having. But it is a prize that could cost her her life.Sent to France on a mission for King Edward IV, she finds herself the target of a man who may be one of the king's most dangerous enemies. Sir Richard Huddleston is bold, enigmatic, and devastatingly handsome. He is used to getting what he wants, and he wants Margery to be his wife. But what else does he want? Margery suspects that Richard has abandoned the king and the house of York and is conspiring with the rebel queen and the traitorous house of Lancaster.Caught between her role as a spy and a fierce passion that neither she nor Richard can deny, Margery finds her heart exposed to the ultimate danger: falling in love. Yet she cannot admit her real mission to Richard. For if she stays true to her noble cause, she'll save many men...and lose the one that matters most.

    . . Booze . . . Boys . . . It’s a dangerous combination. Every girl wants what she can’t have. Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle—and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it. Now that she’s engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful families, Gloria’s party days are over before they’ve even begun . . . or are they? Clara Knowles, Gloria’s goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch—but Clara isn’t as lily-white as she appears. Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she’ll do anything to keep hidden. . . .  Lorraine Dyer, Gloria’s social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria’s shadow. When Lorraine’s envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe. And someone’s going to be very sorry. . . .  From author Jillian Larkin, VIXEN is the first novel in the sexy, dangerous, and ridiculously romantic series set in the Roaring Twenties . . . when anything goes.

    But Louis IX is a religious zealot who denies himself the love and companionship his wife craves. Can she borrow enough of her sister's boldness to grasp her chance for happiness in a forbidden love?Passionate, strong-willed, and stubborn, Eleanor becomes Queen of England. Henry III is a good man, but not a good king. Can Eleanor stop competing with her sister and value what she has, or will she let it slip away?The Sister Queens is historical fiction at its most compelling, and is an unforgettable first novel.

    The greatest city of the Christian world, Constantinople has stood for a thousand years against invading hordes. Mehmet II, the youthful and rash Sultan of the Ottoman Turks is bent on taking the city. He is distrusted by his people and hated by his Grand Vizier. Mehmet risks all to prove he deserves the throne and to accomplish the impossible: the capture of Constantinople. Opposing him is Constantine XI, the wise and accomplished Emperor of the Greeks. Constantine is emperor in name only, for the Greek empire has dwindled to little more than the city itself. Short of resources, soldiers and hope, Constantine must fight against all odds to protect his people and his city from the most powerful army in the medieval world.