.jpg)
Every Sunday Tanzanite highlights books that will be released during the upcoming week. She hopes you will find something you will enjoy!
Queen Defiant by Anne O'Brien. US release June 7, 2011 (released in the UK in April as The Devil's Consort).
A riveting novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine's early adult years from the author of The Virgin Widow.
Orphaned at a young age, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, seeks a strong husband to keep her hold on the vast lands that have made her the most powerful heiress in Europe. But her arranged marriage to Louis VII, King of France, is made disastrous by Louis's weakness of will and fanatical devotion to the Church. Eleanor defies her husband by risking her life on an adventurous Crusade, and even challenges the Pope himself. And in young, brilliant, mercurial Henry d'Anjou, she finds her soul mate-the one man who is audacious enough to claim her for his own and make her Queen of England.
Before the Tudors, there were the Borgias. More passionate. More dangerous. More deadly.
From the author of Poison, comes a new historical thriller, featuring the same intriguing and beautiful heroine: Borgia court poisoner, Francesca Giordano.
In the summer of 1493, Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, has been pope for almost a year. Having played a crucial role in helping him ascend the chair of Saint Peter, Francesca, haunted by the shadows of her own past, is now charged with keeping him there. As court poisoner to the most notorious and dangerous family in Italy, this mistress of death faces a web of peril, intrigue, and deceit that threatens to extinguish the light of the Renaissance.
As dangers close in from every direction, Francesca conceives a desperate plan that puts her own life at risk and hurls her into a nightmare confrontation with a madman intent on destroying all she is pledged to protect. From the hidden crypts of fifteenth-century Rome to its teeming streets alive with sensuality, obsession, and treachery, Francesca must battle the demons of her own dark nature to unravel a plot to destroy the Borgias, seize control of Christendom, and plunge the world into eternal darkness.
Paul Lockhart combines military and political history to offer a major reassessment of one of the most famous battles in American history.
One hot June afternoon in 1775, on the gentle slopes of a hill near Boston, Massachusetts, a small band of ordinary Americans—frightened but fiercely determined—dared to stand up to a superior British force. The clash would be immortalized as the Battle of Bunker Hill: the first real engagement of the American Revolution and one of the most famous battles in our history. But Bunker Hill was not the battle that we have been taught to believe it was.
Revisiting old evidence and drawing on new research, historian Paul Lockhart, author of The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, shows that Bunker Hill was a clumsy engagement pitting one inexperienced army against another. Lockhart tells the rest of the story, too: how a mob of armed civilians became America's first army; how George Washington set aside his comfortable patrician life to take command of the veterans of Bunker Hill; and how the forgotten heroes of 1775—though overshadowed by the more famous Founding Fathers—kept the notion of American liberty alive, and thus made independence possible.
The reign of Charles I, defined by religious conflict, a titanic power struggle with Parliament, and culminating in the English Civil Wars, the execution of the king, and the brief abolition of the monarchy, was one of the most turbulent in English history. Six years after the First Civil War began, and following Charles’ support for the failed Royalist uprising of the Second Civil War, an act of Parliament was passed that produced something unprecedented in the history of England: the trial of an English king on a capital charge. There followed ten extraordinary weeks that finally drew to a dark end on January 30, 1649, when Charles was beheaded in Whitehall. In this acclaimed account, C. V. Wedgwood recreates the dramatic events of the trial and Charles’s final days, to vividly bring to life the main actors in this tragic and compelling story
Fire on Dark Water is recounted by an English gypsy called Lola Blaise, who knows that Captain Edward Teach is a buccaneer when she marries him but has no idea she is about to become the thirteenth wife of the infamous Blackbeard, nor does she realize the unconscionable deeds she will have to perform to avoid the fate of her tragic predecessors. The action takes place in the Eighteenth Century's 'Golden Age of Piracy'. Lola takes us on an epic journey from her early Romany childhood, to loss of innocence in the slums of London, a horrific voyage on a white slave ship, indentured servitude on a Charleston rice plantation, life in a brothel on the 'Pirate Republic' of New Providence, and ultimately aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge (Blackbeard's flagship), as she interacts with real characters in factual situations. This is a gritty, violent, realistic portrayal of the lascivious, often manic events, acted out by dangerous drunk individuals with little left to lose. Warning: Not a tale for the faint of heart!
It is the first century B.C. Cleopatra, the third of the pharaoh's six children, is the one that her father has chosen to be the next queen of Egypt. But when King Ptolemy is forced into exile, Cleopatra is left alone to fend for herself in a palace rife with intrigue and murder. Smart, courageous, ambitious and sensuously beautiful, she possesses the charm to cause two of history's most famous leaders to fall in love with her. But as her cruel sisters plot to steal the throne, Cleopatra realizes there is only one person on whom she can rely--herself.
Of the women in King Richard's life, she is the least known-and the most powerful.
During the Third Crusade, deaths from fever and starvation are common, but King Richard the Lion-Hearted has a secret ally against these impassable enemies-a mysterious healer by the name of Edythe.
She was sent to him by his mother Eleanor, and Richard first assumes that Edythe is a spy. But when her medical knowledge saves his life, she becomes an indispensable member of his camp-even as his loyal soldiers, suspicious of her talent for warding off death, call her a witch.
Jeanne, a young French exile orphaned by the wars of religion on the continent, is brought to London as a young girl disguised as a boy. Growing up, the disguise has not been shed and she finds a living as a clerk, ending up in the household of Robert Cecil. As she witnesses the intrigues and plots swirling round the court of Elizabeth I in the last days of Gloriana’s reign, she finds herself sucked into the orbit of the dashing and ambitious young favourite, the Earl of Essex. The queen draws near to the end of her life, with no heir to follow, and the stakes are high.
As Essex hurtles towards self-destruction, Jeanne finds her loyalties, her disguise and her emotions under threat – in a political climate where the least mistake can attract dire penalties.
This is a beautifully written and evocative novel, rich with the details of life and politics of Elizabeth I’s court. Jeanne’s struggle for survival and love is interwoven with her passionate pull towards the gardens she documents, a lovely and seductive backdrop to the novel.
Two sisters: united by blood, divided by the crown…
They shared childhood memories and grown-up dreams…
Mary was England's precious jewel, the surviving child of the tumultuous relationship between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. However, when Henry fell passionately in love with the dark-eyed Anne Boleyn, he cast his wife and daughter aside.
Henry and Anne's union sees the birth of Elizabeth. Mary is soon declared a bastard, stripped of all royal privileges, performing the lowliest tasks. But, there is something about Elizabeth. And Mary soon grows to love her like a sister.
After the passage of three years, and Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry can no longer bear the sight of his female heir. With the birth of a son, Edward, both Mary and Elizabeth seem destined for oblivion. But as history will show, fate had something far more elaborate in store…
Mary and Elizabeth is an unforgettable story of a powerful love affair that changed the course of history, perfect for fans of The Tudors and Philippa Gregory.
The world of medieval chivalry is at once glamorous and violent, alluring yet alien. Our popular views of the period are largely inherited from the nineteenth-century romantics, for whom chivalry evoked images of knights in shining armour, competing for the attention of fair ladies – with pennons and streamers fluttering from castle battlements.
But what is the reality? Were the rituals and romance of chivalry designed to provide an escape from the brutal facts of almost continuous warfare? Or did they instead help regulate the conduct of war and moderate its violent excesses?
Nigel Saul charts the introduction of chivalry by the Normans, the rise of the knightly class as a social elite, the fusion of chivalry with kingship in the fourteenth century and the influence of chivalry on literature, religion and architecture. He shows us a world of kings and barons, castles and cathedrals – a world shaped by Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades, by Magna Carta and the rule of law, by battles like Bannockburn and Crecy, by the Black Death and by tournaments, round tables and the cult of Arthurianism.
Structured around the related themes of war, politics and knighthood, For Honour and Fame tells the story of England from the Norman Conquest to the aftermath of Henry VII’s triumph at Bosworth in the Wars of the Roses. Wide-ranging, vivid and authoritative, this is the first book to treat chivalry as part of the wider history of medieval England.
1565: a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean stands gatekeeper between East and West. It is about to become the scene for one of the most amazing stories of bravery, battle and bloodlust: the siege of Malta. Formed in the Holy Land in the 11th century, a small band of knights had long sought a home. Driven from their lands by Ottoman might, they came to rest in Malta from where they watched the Turks and corsairs raid the Spanish empire. As word came from Constantinople that Malta was in the sights of the Ottoman Empire, all of Europe watched as a force of over 30,000 men besieged the island - itself only peopled by only 500 knights and a few thousand local soldiers. On that small rock an epic struggle will be played out - the story of individual men, warriors and slaves, but also the story of two worlds colliding.
Murderous intrigue brings Aelric - Blake's engaging, murderous antihero - to Damascus as the triumphant Muslim caliphate sweeps up from Arabia to threaten Constantinople itself. Aelric knows the secrets behind Greek Fire - the flame-throwers that have kept what is left of the once-mighty Roman empire safe until now. And he has very little choice about sharing them with the new rulers. Or so they think . . . for Aelric has not lost any of the cunning and courage that so far, have kept him alive.
In the First Punic War, the Roman legions defeated and humiliated Carthage, their only serious rival for power in the Mediterranean. Now a brilliant young Carthaginian general, called Hannibal, is out for revenge. Caught up in the maelstrom are two young boys, Hanno, the son of a distinguished soldier and confidant of Hannibal, and Quintus, son of a Roman equestrian and landowner. A disastrous adventure will see Hanno sold into slavery and bought by Quintus's father. Although an unexpected friendship springs up between the two boys - and with Quintus's sister, Aurelia - the fortunes of the two warring empires once again separates them. They find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict and an alliance forged through slavery will be played out to its stunning conclusion in battle.
As the papal wars of the Western Schism rage across Europe, a young man takes his first step on the journey of a lifetime. Geoffrey Hotspur dreams of knighthood. As an English orphan-squire bonded to the court of Sir John of Gaunt, uncle of the English King Richard II, his prospects are few. An inveterate gambler already deep in debt, young Geoffrey accepts an invitation to participate in a raid on French lands. His plans go awry, however, after a deadly street brawl results in his banishment from court. As further punishment, he is ordered to join a royal commission bound for Florence. Accompanied by Jean Lagoustine, a mysterious Frenchman whose intentions towards the young squire are not all they appear to be, the ship upon which they journey is waylaid by corsairs. Barely escaping with their lives, Geoffrey and Jean find themselves forming part of a company of Catalonian crossbowmen en route to enlist with the Roman papal army. Intrigue and betrayal dominate the war between the two popes, and the young squire's understanding of faith and fidelity are soon challenged. The need to do right inspires Geoffrey to take a personal stake in the outcome of the conflict. With little more than his wits and a sword, the young squire must find a way to fulfill his duty to his lord, to his faith and to himself. As the war culminates in the final battle for the throne of St. Peter, will Geoffrey find that a knighthood is worth the risk to his honor?
Yowza, that's a lot of new hf coming out this week! A little something for everyone, thanks for highlighting these Daphne!
June 5, 2011 3:22 PM
Ooh I want The Girl in The Mirror!!
June 5, 2011 5:24 PM