Book picks similar to
Pour the Dark Wine by Dinah Lampitt
historical
tudors
historical-fiction
jane-seymour
The Other Countess
Eve Edwards - 2010
. .WILLIAM LACEY has inherited his father's title and his financial ruin. Now the Earl must seek a wealthy heiress and restore his family's fortune. But Will's head has been turned by the gorgeous Ellie, yet their union can never be. Will is destined to marry a worthy Lady so the only question is - which one . . . ?
Wife to Charles II
Hilda Lewis - 1965
This is the remarkable tale of how much a small and gentle woman withstood every conceivable insult both from her king and her adopted country, and yet emerged victorious.
Elizabeth, The Witch's Daughter
Lynda M. Andrews - 2017
She witnesses from the sidelines the glittering splendour of her father's court, and the terrifying consequences of his wrath.With few she can trust, Elizabeth comes to womanhood during the reigns of her brother and sister, shrouded by a web of deceit. She lives in constant danger, yet rises above her detractors to defy her mother’s legacy, and go down in history as one of England’s most ruthless and powerful monarchs. Her life became a testament to the ambitions demonstrated of her parents. Just how much of an influence did Henry VIII’s most notorious wife have on her child? And was Elizabeth's accession Anne Boleyn's final triumph over death?
A powerful and compelling tale about the tumultuous beginnings of the Virgin Queen, this is the perfect read for fans of Anne O’Brien, Elizabeth Chadwick and Alison Weir. It is the first of four newly reissued classics of historical fiction, which also include
The Tudor Heritage, The White Lion of Norfolk and The Danish Queen.
Lynda M. Andrews, who also writes as Lyn Andrews, is the Sunday Times Number One bestselling author of over 34 sagas, and one of the top 100 bestselling authors in the UK. She was born and raised in Liverpool, which serves as the inspiration for many of her novels. She now divides her time between Merseyside and the Isle of Man, where she has lived for several years.
His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester
Jeane Westin - 2010
They were playmates as children, impetuous lovers as adults-and for thirty years were the center of each others' lives. Astute to the dangers of choosing any one man, the Virgin Queen could never give her Sweet Robin what he wanted most-marriage- yet she insisted he stay close by her side. Possessive and jealous, their love survived quarrels, his two disastrous marriages to other women, her constant flirtations, and political machinations with foreign princes.His Last Letter tells the story of this great love... and especially of the last three years Elizabeth and Dudley spent together, the most dangerous of her rule, when their passion was tempered by a bittersweet recognition of all that they shared-and all that would remain unfulfilled.
When Knighthood Was in Flower
Edwin Caskoden - 1898
Based on the memoir of Sir Edwin Caskoden.
The Miracle at St. Bruno's
Philippa Carr - 1974
My birth was, my father used to say, another miracle: He was not young at the time being forty years of age . . . My mother, whose great pleasure was tending her gardens, called me Damask, after the rose which Dr. Linacre, the King's physician, had brought into England that year."Thus begins the story narrated by Damask Farland, daughter of a well-to-do lawyer whose considerable lands adjoin those of St. Bruno's Abbey. It is a story of a life inextricably enmashed with that of Bruno, the mysterious child found on the abbey altar that Christmas morning and raised by the monks to become a man at once handsome and saintly, but also brooding and ominous, tortured by the secret of his origin which looms ever more menacingly over the huge abbey he comes to dominate.This is also the story of an engaging family, the Farlands. Of a fathr wise enough to understand "the happier our King is, the happier I as a true subject must be," a wife twenty years his junior, and a daughter whose intelligence is constantly to war with the strange hold Bruno has upon her destiny. What happens to the Farlands against the background of what is happening to King Henry and his court during this robust period provides a novel in which suspense and the highlights of history are wonderfully balanced.
The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Henry VIII: The Womens' Stories
Amy Licence - 2014
How did they take the leap from courtier to lover, to wife? What was Henry really like as a lover? Henry s women were uniquely placed to experience the tension between his chivalric ideals and the lusts of the handsome, tall, athletic king; his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, was, on one level, a fairy-tale romance but his affairs with Anne Stafford, Elizabeth Carew and Jane Popincourt undermined it early on. Later, his more established mistresses, Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn, risked their good names by bearing him illegitimate children. Typical of his time, Henry did not feel that casual liaisons could threaten his marriage, until he met the one woman who held him at arm s length. The arrival of Anne Boleyn changed everything. Her seductive eyes helped rewrite history. After their passionate marriage turned sour, the king rapidly remarried to Jane Seymour. Her death in childbirth left him alone, without wife or lover, for the first time in decades. In the quest for a new queen, he scoured the courts of Europe, obsessed with the beautiful Christina of Milan, whose rejection of him spurred him into the arms of Anne of Cleves and soon after the lively teenager Catherine Howard. Henry s final years were spent with the elegant and accomplished widow Catherine Parr, who sacrificed personal pleasure for duty by marrying him while her heart was bestowed elsewhere. What was it like for these women to share Henry s bed, bear his children or sit on the English throne? He was a man of great appetites, ready to move heaven and earth for a woman he desired; their experiences need to be readdressed in a frank, modern take on the affairs of his heart. What was it really like to be Mrs Henry VIII?"
Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
Tracy Borman - 2014
As Henry VIII’s right-hand man, Cromwell was the architect of the English Reformation, secured Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and plotted the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and upon his arrest, was accused of trying to usurp the King himself. But here Tracy Borman reveals a different side of one of the most notorious figures in history: that of a caring husband and father, a fiercely loyal servant and friend, and a revolutionary who helped make medieval England into a modern state.Born in the mid-1480s to a lowly blacksmith, Cromwell left home at eighteen to make his fortune abroad. After serving as a mercenary in the French army, working for a powerful merchant banker in Florence at the height of the Renaissance, and spending time as a cloth merchant in the commercial capital of the world, the Netherlands, Cromwell returned to England and built a flourishing legal practice. He soon became the protégé of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and then worked his way into the King’s inner circle. As Henry’s top aide, Cromwell was at the heart of the most momentous events of his time and wielded immense power over both church and state. His seismic political, religious, and social reforms had an impact that can still be felt today. Grounded in excellent primary source research, Thomas Cromwell gives an inside look at a monarchy that has captured the Western imagination for centuries, and tells the story of a controversial and enigmatic man who forever changed the shape of his country.
The Flower Reader
Elizabeth Loupas - 2012
On the very day she means to deliver it to newly crowned Mary, Queen of Scots, Rinette's husband is brutally assassinated.Devastated, Rinette demands justice before she will surrender the casket, but she is surrounded by ruthless men who will do anything to possess it. In the end, the flowers are all she can trust-and only the flowers will lead her safely home to Granmuir.
Island of the Swans
Ciji Ware - 1989
In love since childhood with Thomas Fraser, when she hears that he's been killed in America, she marries the Duke of Gordon with disastrous results. But Fraser, very much alive, returns to England to claim her love. In addition to telling a heart-wrenching love story, Island of the Swans also paints a fascinating portrait of a powerful and controversial woman and the tumultuous era in which she lived. Patroness of poet Robert Burns, advisor to King George, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Jane Maxwell was a towering figure in her own time and is an unforgettable heroine. (20100126)
The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen
Susan Bordo - 2013
Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne's death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Susan Bordo probes the complexities of one of history's most infamous relationships.Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and reimagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto-"mean girl," feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies.
Cloisterman – an epic chronicle of love and loyalty in Tudor England
Juliet Dymoke - 1973
A new Tudor monarch has just been crowned: a handsome, energetic king. His court, so different from his father’s, is a glamorous, seductive magnet to ambitious young noblemen from across the country. One such man is Julian Allard who has fled a monastic life in Northumberland to seek love, fame and fortune at the court of Henry VIII. But when his beloved marries another and the King proves to be a temperamental master, Julian’s idyllic life at court begins to fall apart. Dismissing the advice of friends and the wise heads around him, he finds himself on a path to self-destruction, believing only in the dark prophesy of a fortune teller. Cloisterman is powerful Tudor chronicle from a master storyteller. Juliet Dymoke’s portrayal of life at the court of Henry VIII at an exciting time of intellectual and artistic promise, is compelling, moving and utterly convincing.
Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen
Joanna Denny - 2004
Even after her execution in May 1536, on trumped-up charges of adultery, her reputation has been pursued beyond the grave, subjected to all manner of accusation. The unsavory account of her life that has come down through history is one shaped by her enemies. Joanna Denny's powerful new biography presents a radically different picture of Anne-a woman who was highly literate, accomplished, and a devout defender of her Protestant faith. Her tragedy was that her looks and vivacious charm attracted the notice of a violent and paranoid king and trapped her in the vicious politics of the Tudor court, where a deadly game was being played between the old nobility and the new, between the old faith and the new. Denny's compelling account of Anne Boleyn plunges the reader into the heart of the intrigue, romance, and danger of the Tudor court and the turbulent times that changed England forever. It will change forever our perception of this much-maligned queen.
Legacy
Susan Kay - 1983
From the spectacular era that bears her name comes the mesmerizing story of Elizabeth I: her tragic childhood; her ruthless confrontations with Mary, Queen of Scots; and her brilliant reign as Europe's most celebrated queen. And into this beautiful tapestry Susan Kay weaves the vibrant and compelling image of Elizabeth the woman. Proud, passionate, captivating in her intensity, she inspired men to love her from the depths of their soulsand to curse the pain of that devotion. Teasing out an intriguing answer to the central mystery of the Virgin Queensatisfying to readers new to Elizabeth's life as well as die-hard fans of the Tudors here is a premier exploration of the woman who changed the course of history, and three men whose destinies belonged to her alone.
Lady in Waiting
Susan Meissner - 2010
Content in her comfortable marriage of twenty-two years, Jane Lindsay had never expected to watch her husband, Brad, pack his belongings and walk out the door of their Manhattan home. But when it happens, she feels powerless to stop him and the course of events that follow Brad's departure. Jane finds an old ring in a box of relics from a British jumble sale and discovers a Latin inscription in the band along with just one recognizable word: Jane. Feeling an instant connection to the mysterious ring bearing her namesake, Jane begins a journey to learn more about the ring and perhaps about herself.