Every Sunday Tanzanite highlights books that will be released during the upcoming week. She hopes you will find something you will enjoy!
Hope everyone had a nice time ringing in the New Year!! I know we did - which is why this is posted a day late...
The Queen and the Courtesan by Freda Lightfoot. US release January 1, 2012 (released in the UK in September 2011).
Henriette d'Entragues isn't satisfied with simply being the mistress of Henry IV of France, she wants a crown too. Despite his promises to marry her, the King is obliged by political necessity to ally himself with Marie de Medici, an Italian princess who will bring riches to the treasury. But Henriette isn't for giving up easily. She has a written promise of marriage which she intends to use to declare the royal marriage illegal. All she has to do to achieve her ambition is to give Henry a son, then whatever it takes through intrigue and conspiracy to set him on the throne.
At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Barnhill. US and UK release January 3, 2012.
A sweeping tale of sexual seduction and intrigue at the court of Henry VIII, At the Mercy of the Queen is a rich and dramatic debut historical about Madge Shelton, cousin and lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn.
At the innocent age of fifteen, Lady Margaret Shelton arrives at the court of Henry VIII and quickly becomes the confidante of her cousin, Queen Anne Boleyn. But she soon finds herself drawn into the perilous web of Anne’s ambition.
Desperate to hold onto the king’s waning affection, Anne schemes to have him take her guileless young cousin as mistress, ensuring her husband’s new paramour will owe her loyalty to the queen. But Margaret has fallen deeply in love with a handsome young courtier. She is faced with a terrible dilemma: give herself to the king and betray the love of her life or refuse to become his mistress and jeopardize the life of the her cousin, Queen Anne.
Armada by John Stack. UK release January 5, 2012.
The author of the MASTERS OF THE SEA series, is back with a standalone battle book that will blow all others out of the water.
1587. Two nations are locked in bitter conflict. One strives for dominance, the other for survival.
After decades of religious strife, Elizabeth sits on the throne of England. The reformation continues. Catholic revolts have been ruthlessly quashed, and Elizabeth has ordered the execution of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. On the continent bloody religious wars rage, but England stands apart, her surrounding seas keeping her safe from the land armies of her would-be enemies. Only at sea do the English show their teeth. Sea captains and adventurers, hungry for the spoils of trade from the Spanish Main, regularly attack the gold-laden galleons of Catholic Spain. They are terriers nipping at the feet of war-horses but their victories disrupt the treasury of Spain, England's greatest threat, and Elizabeth's refusal to rein in her sea-captains further antagonises Philip II.
Thomas Varian is a captain in Drake's formidable navy, rising quickly through the ranks. But he guards a secret – one for which he would pay with his life if discovered: he is a Catholic. He is about to find his conflicting loyalty to his religion, to his Queen, and to his country tested under the most formidable of circumstances: facing the mighty Armada. Unknown to Varian, he will also be facing his long-estranged father, who is fighting on the side of the Spanish enemy…
Perdition by James Jackson. UK release January 5, 2012.
Almost two hundred years have elapsed since the Crusader armies took Jerusalem. Now it is the turn of the Saracen to seek revenge and send an overwhelming force against the last Christian enclave in the Holy Land. In Acre, the defenders await their fate. Knight and bishop, mercenary and merchant, all will be tested and all may perish. For this is the endgame. No quarter will be given and no mercy shown.
William of Beaujeu, Grand Master of the Templars, will stop at little to secure the city and preserve his legendary military order. He knows that final judgement is approaching and that time is running out. But among the garrison are allies - the adventurer de Flor, Theobald, the young Hospitaller, the court dwarf Amethyst, the camel master Selim and the orphan boy and spy Benedict - who must stay alive in the chaos to be unleashed. In their midst prowl the feared Assassins and sinister enemies from among a rabble army of Italians. Deserted by the pope and the princes of Europe, it seems as if Acre faces annihilation - but perhaps something can still be salvaged from perdition . . .
Death of an Empire by M.K. Hume. UK release January 5, 2012.
Merlin's epic quest continues as he journeys to Constantinople in search of his father.
Myrddion Emrys of Segontium is the product of a brutal rape, but when King Vortigern hints at his father's identity, Myrddion embarks on a journey across France and Italy to Constantinople. It is a voyage that is to turn the young healer into a man of great renown. Serving under General Flavius Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, Myrddion saves the lives of thousands of warriors and, on his arrival in Rome, he heals many more, including Cleoxenes, Envoy to Emperor Theodosius of the East, on his way to a delegation with Attila the Hun. But a deadlier conflict between Emperor Valentinian of the West and Senator Petronius Maximus is still to come and Myrddion must use all his strength to carry out his work in a world that is evil.
Jezebel by Eleanor de Jong. US and UK release Janaury 5, 2012.
Set against the sweeping backdrop of the ancient Holy Land, Jezebel is a tale of love, loss and deceit - and one woman’s struggle to survive in a land filled with rivals plotting her downfall…
Her name is iconic. Her courage extraordinary. Her story remarkable.
Jezebel, a young princess of Tyre is destined to be married to King Ahab of Israel. Yet she is determined to rule her own life and begins an illicit affair with Jehu, a visiting prince at court.
Years pass and Jehu, unable to relinquish his love for Jezebel grows bitter and twisted. But he is unaware of Jezebel's greatest secret – that he is father to her eldest son Ahaziah, the heir to Israel's throne.
With the King's health deteriorating, Jezebel gradually assumes control of Israel but hatred of her is spreading across the land, fanned by the prophet Elijah and his aide, the terrifying Elisha. As they plot her downfall, Jezebel must find her inner strength and fight for her beliefs against all odds.
Set against the sweeping backdrop of the Holy Land comes an epic tale of one of the most courageous and controversial women of all time. Jezebel will enthral fans of The Red Tent and The Borgia Bride.
The Shadow Prince by Terence Morgan. UK release January 5, 2012.
Perkin Warbeck is an ordinary young man in fifteenth-century Tournai. The son of a port official, he loves nothing more than swimming, singing and fishing with his father. But Perkin has a secret. His real name is Richard, and he is the rightful Prince of England. Thought to have been murdered with his brother, Edward, in the Tower of London, he was covertly taken to the continent and placed with an adoptive family under an assumed identity. But when his enemies seek him out he must flee, and embarks on a new life of derring-do, sailing the high seas with the era’s greatest adventurers.
But Richard cannot avoid his fate forever. He knows he must return to England, to assume the throne that is his birthright. But what for Richard is a homecoming, for the new king, Henry Tudor, is nothing less than an invasion, and ‘Perkin’ slowly comes to learn that the price of his goal is the blood of innocent men. Based on painstaking research, and peopled by some of the most extraordinary characters of an extraordinary period, Perkin’s tale is a vivid, authentic, and hugely entertaining historical adventure.














Adding The Shadow Prince to my TBR pile! You know I'm a sucker for anything Plantagenet!
January 3, 2012 12:29 PM