Tanzanite's Castle Full of Books

By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan.  US and UK release May 18, 2010.  Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel is enraged and takes retribution into his own hands. But he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. As Santángel witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost…the chance to hope for a better world. Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him.  Within the dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition. Irresolvable conflict rages within the conversos in By Fire, By Water, torn between the religion they left behind and the conversion meant to ensure their safety. In this story of love, God, faith, and torture, fifteenth-century Spain comes to dazzling, engrossing life.

Stealing Fire by Jo Graham.  US and UK release May 25, 2010 (but available now from Amazon).  Alexander the Great's soldier, Lydias of Miletus, has survived the final campaigns of the king's life. He now has to deal with the chaos surrounding his death. Lydias throws his lot in with Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals who has grabbed Egypt as his personal territory. Aided by the eunuch Bagoas, the Persian archer Artashir, and the Athenian courtesan Thais, Ptolemy and Lydias must take on all the contenders in a desperate adventure whose prize is the fate of a white city by the sea, and Alexander's legacy.

History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third by James Gairdner.  Non-fiction.  US reissue May 27, 2010 (but available now from Amazon).    No English king has been the subject of more heated debate than Richard III. In this 1898 revised edition of his classic biography, Gairdner attempts to produce a more balanced analysis of the sources than most earlier writers. While largely accepting the anti-Yorkist position shown by Thomas More and Shakespeare, he does reject some of the crimes attributed to Richard, such as the murder of his brother George, Duke of Clarence. He states at the outset that Richard was not a monster but the product of his times, when violence and ruthlessness were common political weapons. He also offers a more rounded picture of the king, showing good points as well as bad, rather than a caricature of evil. The most significant addition to this edition is the substantial appendix on the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, making use of continental sources hitherto unknown to English historians.

Anne Boleyn:  Fatal Attractions by G.W. Bernard.  Non-fiction.  US release May 25, 2010 (but available now through Amazon): released in the UK in April.  In this groundbreaking new biography, G. W. Bernard offers a fresh portrait of one of England’s most captivating queens. Through a wide-ranging forensic examination of sixteenth-century sources, Bernard reconsiders Boleyn’s girlhood, her experience at the French court, the nature of her relationship with Henry, and the authenticity of her evangelical sympathies. He depicts Anne Boleyn as a captivating, intelligent, and highly sexual woman whose attractions Henry resisted for years until marriage could ensure legitimacy for their offspring. He shows that it was Henry, not Anne, who developed the ideas that led to the break with Rome. And, most radically, he argues that the allegations of adultery that led to Anne’s execution in the Tower could be close to the truth.