TWO HUSBANDS. BY ORDER OF THE KING. When young Joan married William de Montecute at Westminster Abbey in 1341, she became the first and only princess in British history to knowingly commit bigamy. It was done at the command of her uncle and king, Edward III.Yet Joan of Kent is no frail English rose. For ten long years she defies her family, her country and her king to keep faith with the man she claims is her true husband.They are all sure she will break in the end.One of the most astonishing and poignant love stories in medieval history from internationally bestselling author Colin Falconer.What readers are saying about A VAIN AND INDECENT WOMAN“I really like all the Falconer books I’ve read… but this one is going to rank as my favourite. It’s one-of-a-kind. “Joan of Woodstock” doesn’t have the historical celebrity status of an Elizabeth I, or Catherine d’Medici; but I’m betting you’ll learn something, and be entertained in the process!” Shari *****“I loved this book… This captivating historical read was filled with complex and memorable characters that brought history to life. Joan of Kent was an absolutely fascinating woman whose life and times were captured so wonderfully in this book… I read it. I loved it. I bought it. It’s an historical read that shouldn’t be missed.” Meg Nyberg *****DISCOVER MORE COLIN FALCONER HISTORICAL FICTION CLASSIC HISTORY: Book 1: SILK ROADBook 2: HAREMBook 3: A VAIN AND INDECENT WOMANBook 4: CLEOPATRA: Daughter of the NileBook 5: AZTECBook 6: STIGMATABook 7: EAST INDIABook 8: A GREAT LOVE OF SMALL PROPORTIONISABELLA: Braveheart of France (published by LAKE UNION) 20TH CENTURY STORIES: Book 1: ANASTASIABook 2: MY BEAUTIFUL SPYBook 3: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMYBook 4: LIVE FOR METHE UNKILLABLE KITTY O’KANE (published by LAKE UNION)LOVING LIBERTY LEVINE (published by LAKE UNION)COLIN FALCONER CRIME:VENOMLUCIFER FALLS (published by Little, Brown London)INNOCENCE DIES (published by Little, Brown London)

    This is the true story of Aethelflaed, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, daughter of Alfred the Great. She was the only female leader of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Born into the royal house of Wessex at the height of the Viking wars, she is sent to her aunt in Mercia as a foster-child, only to return home when the Vikings overrun Mercia. In Wessex, she witnesses another Viking attack and this compounds her fear of the enemy. She falls in love with a Mercian lord but is heartbroken to be given as bride to the ruler of Mercia to seal the alliance between the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. She must learn to subjugate her feelings for her first love, overcome her indifference to her husband and win the hearts of the Mercians who despise her as a foreigner and twice make an attempt on her life. When her husband falls ill and is incapacitated, she has to learn to rule and lead an army in his stead. Eventually she must fight to save her adopted Mercia from the Vikings and, ultimately, her own brother.

    Sarah will help Major Storrington, confined to a wheelchair by the tank accident that finished a promising military career, to research and write the family history of the Storringtons, an armaments dynasty. She will also serve as governess to his small son.To her dismay, Sarah finds the ménage at Maidenshall, the great Victorian mansion built on the site of a nunnery, a decidedly uneasy one:* Bored, diversion-starved Cressida increasingly seeks escape in her London fashion career and, perhaps, in the arms of other men;* Adolphus Storrington is a lonely, distracted child who spends most of his waking hours in the company of a fantasy playmate;* The Major, handsome, powerful and restive in his wheelchair prison, alternates between bursts of creative energy and outbursts of frustrated rage at his family, servants, and Sarah, who is falling in love with him;* And Henrietta Galloway, the nonagenarian retainer who wanders about Maidenshall unsettling everyone she meets with ramblings about days long past.When Sarah discovers two Edwardian-era diaries, she slowly unravels the mystery of a passionate betrayal of a previous governess and the master of Maidenshall.

    I might be the only person in Scotland that’s not fussed, one way or the other. But my friend, Lily, loves the idea. That’s how I wound up on the set, cast as an extra in a low budget movie set in a castle. I’m a freshly-trained history teacher about to begin my new career. History’s my passion and soon I’ll get to teach it all day long. There are so many other, more important things I should be doing right now, rather than standing in line waiting for a costume, then waiting for hair, then waiting for makeup. When I agreed to this, to be part of the crowd scene, Lily was thrilled and promised me a special time. She delivered on that promise-rather too well. Sure, I love history, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to be thrust back in time, into our dark past. That’s what happens to me though. I suddenly find myself living the humble and horribly dangerous life of a Scottish lass in 1263. I was not ready for this. I’m a modern woman who likes modern things. I love the idea that there’s a doctor around the corner waiting to cure me. If I had to choose a place and time in history to stop for a while, it wouldn’t be medieval Scotland. That's the end of the Viking era. It’s a tumultuous time in history when the Vikings still own small bits of Scotland, and are determined to hold on, no matter the cost. The Scots are equally as stubborn. Nevertheless, this is where I end up, forced to deal with lawlessness, disease, lack of education, and an entirely foreign sort of man. In these wayward times, men are not like they are in my own century. Here, they’re wilder and a whole lot more frightening. I need to find my way home before something really bad happens to me. I’m not blending in well in the past. Laird Bern is curious and itching to know more. He plans to keep me indefinitely, I think. But that’s not happening because I’m determined to get home again, back to my own time, to the place I belong. Someone else has noticed me too—Storr, the Viking leader. It’s bad enough to be caught between warring Vikings and Scotsmen, but somehow I also find myself trapped in a tug of love. Do I want an ambitious Viking leader or a rugged, Scottish laird, one that is hellbent on getting his own way? What I want is to go home.

    . . More Like Wrestling is the magnificent debut novel by one of the most acclaimed music journalists of her generation. It tells the story of Pinch and Paige, two sisters coming of age in Oakland, California, in the 1980s, a time when that beautiful, crumbling city is being transformed by tectonic shifts, both literal and figurative. The novel unfolds through the alternating narration of the two sisters: Pinch, quiet and observant, and Paige, louder and wilder but faltering under her facade. The sisters are teenage refugees from a violent home, living alone in a faded Victorian mansion where they survive by creating a closed world centered around each other and their new friends—a rowdy makeshift family of castoffs, dealers, and drama queens on the periphery of the burgeoning drug game, some looking for a way out, some looking for a way deeper in. As the sisters grow from girls into women, they are confronted with a series of surprising reversals—death, imprisonment, and, just maybe, love—that force them to come to grips with the truth about their choices, their friends, and their tangled roots.More Like Wrestling takes readers into fresh and surprising terrain, bringing a complex set of characters to vivid life with bracing honesty and sophistication. With a journalist’s eye for detail and a poet’s ear for language, Danyel Smith has written an unforgettable tale about memory, forgiveness, and love in a world built on fault lines.

    Even the king’s mother, Emma of Normandy, detests her daughter-in-law and Edith is soon on the receiving end of her displeasure. Balancing her sense of family obligation with her duty to her husband, Edith must also prove herself to her detractors. Edward’s and Edith’s relationship is respectful and caring, but when Edith’s enemies engineer her family’s fall from grace, the king is forced to send her away. She vows to do anything to protect her family’s interests if she returns, at any cost. Can Edith navigate the dangerous path fate has set her, while still remaining loyal to both her husband and her family?

    Her works frequently featured Catholic themes and beliefs. Mrs. Keyes first book, The Old Gray Homestead, was published in 1919. The Gray's farm is falling apart until a wealthy widow named Sylvia comes to stay with the family. She helps rebuild the farm, pays for trips and music lessons. Austin Gray is falling in love with her, as are several other men. Can a plain farmer and a society woman find happiness?

    Her husband Ruben is a handsome philanderer who has a knack for creating phony lawsuits. Their precocious daughter Devorah, tells–and often imagines–the richly involving story of their lives. No one expects the devoted Chenia to fall under the spell of a lover of her own, but the Arnows' lives unfold in many surprises. In tart and seductive storytelling, Swimming Toward the Ocean follows husbands and wives and children through often shifting and misguided connections, illuminating the timeless patterns of immigrant life, and the search for love and a place in a new world.

    The stories have a point: they remind us that courage and clear-thinking in the midst of great danger go hand in hand and are the keys to survival. Not only is cowardice disgraceful, it is frequently lethal. Includes: Triumph of the Boon; The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck; Dr Blanke's First Command; Counterpunch; USS Cornucopia; December 6th; Rendezvous.

    Reports of Saracen patrols devastating towns and villages cause panic throughout the Outremer, and Baldwin, the teenage king beset with leprosy, tries desperately to counter the threat. But nobody knows where the enemy forces are and the Christian forces are stretched thinly.With the king’s army campaigning in the north and the feared Templar knights defending the border far to the south, only one man has even the slightest chance of finding out Saladin’s true intentions, a Templar Sergeant named Thomas Cronin. With time running out and the odds stacked heavily against him, Cronin needs to find the Saracen army and relay the information back to the leper king in time to prevent the fall of Jerusalem, and indeed, the Holy Land itself!

    Would you pay someone to bear your sorrow? Lady Celeste is overwhelmed with grief when her infant son dies. Desperate to find relief, she begs a passing peddler to buy her sorrow. Jean, the cynical peddler she meets, is nobody’s fool; he does not believe in superstitions and insists Celeste include the valuable ruby ring on her finger along with the nail in return for his coin. Jean and Celeste both find themselves changed by their transaction in ways neither of them anticipated. Jean finds that bearing another’s sorrow opens him to strange fits of compassion, a trait he can ill afford. Meanwhile Celeste learns that without her wedding ring her husband may set her aside, leaving her ruined. She determines to retrieve it before he finds out—without reclaiming her sorrow. But how will she find the peddler and convince him to give up the precious ruby ring?If you like realistic medieval fiction with evocative prose, compelling characters and a unique story, you’ll love this incredible, introspective journey into the south of France in the 12th Century, based on an actual medieval belief. Winner of the Royal Palm Literary Award for Historical Fiction."J. A. McLachlan is a terrific writer -- wry and witty, with a keen eye for detail.” ~ author Robert J. Sawyer"Strong, character-driven fiction -- McLachlan makes you both care and think. You can't ask for more.” ~ author Tanya Huff

    Facing gunfights and car chases, the treasure hunters locate a 500-year-old Mayan codex, the next clue on their adventure. Peter’s grandson, Charley, and Obie’s granddaughter, Mac, come along for the quest, but they may find themselves drawn to a different kind of treasure.Constantly one tiny step ahead of their enemies as they scour the caves, cliffs, and canyons of Southern Utah, Obie’s team will have to rely on each other if they want to reach the treasure before their pursuers. But what will they do if not all in their numbers can be trusted?

    The death of young Will Douglas's father plunged him into a world where might prevailed and the end justified the means.

     For Waltheof of Huntington and his fellow survivors of the Battle of Hastings, there is a simple choice: submit to this new foreign king, or die at the gallows. Follow the heart; or follow the head. As the country bows under the Norman yoke and Waltheof struggles to come to terms with his decision, a new Saxon hope emerges. A last challenge to the Norman might, a final chance for glory, a decisive test of old allegiances and new loyalties. Of the Ring of Earls, the first in Juliet Dymoke’s epic Conqueror Trilogy, charts the fate of Waltheof of Huntington: a knight whose true story embodies the turmoil that followed the last successful invasion of Britain.

    The wedding of the sixth son of King George III to the daughter of the Earl of Dunmore would not only be concealed – it would also be illegal.Lady Augusta Murray had known Prince Augustus Frederick for only three months but they had already fallen deeply in love and were desperate to be married. However, the Royal Marriages Act forbade such a union without the King’s permission and going ahead with the ceremony would change Augusta’s life forever. From a beautiful socialite she became a social pariah; her children were declared illegitimate and her family was scorned.In FORBIDDEN WIFE Julia Abel Smith uses material from the Royal Archives and the Dunmore family papers to create a dramatic biography set in the reigns of Kings George III and IV against the background of the American and French Revolutions.