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Every week Tanzanite features upcoming historical fiction and history related non-fiction books that have come to her attention and may be of interest to others. Since she has an out of control TBR pile, so should everyone else!
I took a little break over the holidays so things have gotten a little backed up - this week's list is a long one!
Between Love and Honor by Alexandra Lapierre. US and UK release April 2012.
Between Love and Honor is a historical love story based on the facts of Czar Nicholas I of Russia’s 25-year struggle to contain the Muslims of the Caucasus Mountains. The book follows Jamal Eddin, son of the Jihadist warrior Imam Shamil, as he’s taken hostage by the Czar. The boy so impressed the Czar that he was raised alongside the Czar’s sons. He was encouraged to practice his religion – part of a plot by the Czar to place the boy as ruler in his father’s stead, bringing the interests of Russia to power – and he managed to incorporate Islam into courtly life among the glamorous Imperial set.
All this changed, however, when he fell in love; the girl was from one of the most celebrated intellectual families in the Empire, and Jamal Eddin could have her hand only if he agreed to convert to Christianity. Deeply in love, he would willingly commit this act of apostasy. Despite the plans the Czar had for his protégé, Nicholas also agreed to the match; indeed, he promised to stand as godfather at Jamal Eddin’s baptism and best man at his wedding. Upon this news, 17 years after his kidnapping, Jamal’s father makes his move, but leaves the choice to his son: will he return to his village or remain with his love?
The sequel to the Man Booker-winning Wolf Hall.
‘My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he’ll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he’ll cut off your leg,’ says Walter Cromwell in the year 1500. ‘But if you don’t cut across him he’s a very gentleman. And he’ll stand anyone a drink.’
By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.
In ‘Bring up the Bodies’, sequel to the Man Booker Prize-winning ‘Wolf Hall’, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. From history’s darkroom, this novel offers a speaking picture to the modern world, a vision of Tudor England so recognizable it defies archaism. It is the work of one of our great writers at the height of her powers.
Few philosophers are more often referred to and more often misunderstood. Truly a product of the Renaissance period, Machiavelli was as much a revolutionary in the field of political philosophy as Leonardo or Michelangelo were in painting and sculpture. Machiavelli spent years studying events and people before writing his famous books, which were based on observations of human nature that were as perceptive as Shakespeare’s.
Descended from minor nobility, he grew up in a household that was run by a vacillating and incompetent father. He eventually became an important figure in the Florentine state but was defeated by the deposed Medici and Pope Julius II. He was tortured, but eventually freed by the restored Medici.
Machiavelli had seen the best and the worst of human nature, and he understood how the world operated—not how it should operate, but how it actually did. He was appropriately cynical in his writing, given what he had personally experienced. He was an outstanding writer, and his work remains fascinating nearly 500 years later.
In 2011 Freya Dane, a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology, arrives on the ancient Scottish island of Findnar. After years of estrangement from her father, himself an archaeologist who recently died, Freya has come to find out what she can about his work. As she reads through his research notes, she sees he learned a great deal about the Viking and Christian history of the island. But what he found only scratches the surface of the discoveries Freya is about to make.
In 800 A.D. a Pictish girl named Signy loses her entire family during a Viking raid. She is taken in by the surviving members of the Christian community on Findnar, but when she falls deeply in love with a Viking boy, she is cast out. She eventually becomes a nun and finds herself at the center of the clash between the island’s three religious cultures. The tragedy of her story is that, in the end, she must choose among her adopted faith, her native religion, and the man she loves.
Centuries apart, Freya and Signy are each on the verge of life-changing events that will bring present-day and Viking-era Scotland together. The Island House plunges the reader into a past that never dies and a love that reaches out across a thousand years.
Sullen-eyed and broken-hearted, fourteen-year-old Catherine de Medici arrives in Marseilles to marry Henry of Orleans, second son of the King of France. On the promise of a dowry fit for a king, Catherine has left her true love in Italy, forced into trading her future for a stake in the French crown.
Amid the glittering fetes and banquets of the most immoral court in sixteenth-century Europe, the reluctant bride becomes a passionate but unwanted wife. Catherine is humiliated when she spies Henry with his lover, the infamous Diane de Poitiers. Tortured by what she sees, Catherine becomes occupied by a ruthless ambition destined to make her the most despised woman in France: the dream that one day the French crown will be worn by a Medici heir...
River of Destiny by Barbara Erskine. UK release July 5, 2012.
From the bestselling author of Time’s Legacy and Lady of Hay comes a thrilling new novel, River of Destiny, whose epic story spans Anglo Saxon Britain, Victorian Suffolk and the present day.
On the banks of the River Deben in Suffolk lies a set of barns dating back to the Anglo Saxons, within their walls secrets have laid buried for centuries.
Zoe and Ken have just moved into one of the barns, ready to start a new life away from the hustle and bustle of the city. To the outside world they seem like an ordinary couple, but underneath they are growing more distant by the day. And when Zoe becomes close to local recluse, Leo, she finds her attraction to him undeniable.
Whilst farmers are ploughing the land surrounding the barns, sets of human bones are found and when the police arrive it becomes clear that the bones are much older than first suspected…
From an ancient burial ground to a Victorian murder, Erskine will have you gripped as the mystery unfolds across the ages…
The pursuit of the Virgin Queen was the greatest hunt in history. For more than half a century Elizabeth I was pursued by kings, princes, and nobles from around the world. Yet not one of these illustrious suitors managed to secure their quarry.
Why? Was she haunted by the six marriages of her father, Henry VIII? Was her traumatic early love affair with Thomas Seymour, effectively her stepfather, to blame? Or was Elizabeth simply in love with the chase?
During the marriage negotiations, which spanned half a century, romance blended with diplomacy as suitor after suitor endeavored to ally himself to her in the most intimate of treaties.
Throughout it all Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was the most persistent of the suitors to the Queen, and although he never won her, he was dearly loved by Elizabeth all her life.
As the author of The Prince, Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with the work of the devil, with the brutal exercise of power, and with immorality. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this richly told historical novel, the life of the much vilified philosopher comes to vivid life The historical Machiavelli is a diabolically clever but mild mannered, conscientious civil servant who struts upon the same stage as heavyweights like Florence’s Medici family, the nefarious and perhaps incestuous Borgias, the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and the doomed prophet Savonarola. His is an adventure story replete with violence, treachery, heroism, betrayal, sex, corrupt popes, noble outlaws, deformed kings, menacing Turks, even more menacing Lutherans, unscrupulous astrologers, untrustworthy dentists—and, of course, true love.
Imprisoned, tortured and ultimately abandoned, Machiavelli nevertheless remains the sworn enemy of tyranny and a lifelong champion of freedom and the republican form of government. Idealistic to the point of impracticality, he pays a dear price for his convictions. Out of the cesspool that was Italian Renaissance politics, only one name is still uttered today—that of Niccolo Machiavelli.
Hunter’s Rage by Michael Arnold. UK release August 2, 2012.
Posted to the hostile territory of Dartmoor, Captain Innocent Stryker and his men are attacked by an elite cavalry unit commanded by the formidable Colonel Gabriel Wild and suffer heavy losses. Stryker has already clashed once with Wild, and the Roundhead has sworn to seek his revenge. After the attack, Stryker is faced with the annihilation of his company as he is hounded across the moor, eventually seeking shelter on an isolated tor populared by an enigmatic former priest who harbours no love for the King's cause. Colonel Wild is assisted in his revenge by Osmyn Hogg, Parliamentarian Witchfinder, who shares his own deadly history with Stryker. To save his honour and his life, Stryker must lead his men to glory from the protection of the lonely granite-topped hill. Into this atmosphere of intrigue and danger comes the beautiful but mysterious Cecily Cade. Stryker comes to her aid, unaware that she carries with her special knowledge that may prove the key to Royalist victory.
The battle between Stryker and his old foes takes him from the bleak isolation of Dartmoor, through the war-ravaged lands of southern England and finally to Stratton, where the bloody battle between Cornwall and Devon will decide the fate of the south-west.
The Kingmaker’s Daughter by Philippa Gregory. US release August 7, 2012; UK release August 16, 2012.
The Kingmaker’s Daughter is the gripping and ultimately tragic story of the daughters of the man known as the “Kingmaker,” the most powerful magnate in England through the Cousins’ Wars. In the absence of a son and heir, he uses the two girls as pawns in his political games, but they grow up to be influential players in their own right. In this novel, her first sister story since The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory explores the lives of two fascinating young women.
At the court of Edward IV and his beautiful queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne grows from a delightful child brought up in intimacy and friendship with the family of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to become ever more fearful and desperate when her father makes war on his former friends. Her will is tested when she is left widowed and fatherless, with her mother in sanctuary and her sister married to the enemy. Fortune’s wheel turns again when Richard rescues Anne from her sister’s house, with danger still following Anne, even as she eventually ascends to the throne as queen. Having lost those closest to her, she must protect herself and her precious only child, Prince Edward, from a court full of royal rivals.
The King’s Damsel by Kate Emerson. US and UK release August 7, 2012.
In 1533 and again in 1534, Henry the Eighth reportedly kept a mistress while he was married to Anne Boleyn. Now, that mistress comes to vivid life in Kate Emerson’s The King’s Damsel.
A real-life letter from Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, written on September 27, 1534, reported that the king had “renewed and increased the love he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of the Court” and that the queen had tried “to dismiss the damsel from her service.” Other letters reveal that the mystery woman was a “true friend” of the Princess (later Queen) Mary, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon.
Though no one knows who “the king’s damsel” really was, here Kate Emerson presents her as young gentlewoman Thomasine Lodge, a lady-in-waiting to King Henry’s daughter, Princess Mary. Thomasine becomes the Princess’s confidante, especially as Henry’s marriage to Catherine dissolves and tensions run high. When the king procures a divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn, who is suspicious and distrustful of Mary, Mary has Thomasine placed in Anne’s service to be her eyes and ears. And that’s when she gets the attention of the king...
Rich in historical detail and featuring a wealth of bonus material, The King’s Damsel is sure to keep readers coming back for more.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Second Messiah – an intriguing thriller about an archeologist who discovers new clues to the mysterious disappearance of Princess Anastasia.
Dr. Laura Pavlov is a member of an international team digging on the outskirts of the present day Russian city of Ekaterinburg, where the Romanov royal family was executed by its captors in July 1918.
When Dr. Pavlov discovers two bodies perfectly preserved in permafrost in a mineshaft, she discovers dramatic new clues to the disappearance of the Romanovs, and in particular their famous daughter Princess Anastasia, whose murder has always been in doubt. What Pavlov learns will change the accepted course of world history and hurl her back into the past - and into a maelstrom of secrets and lies.
The Romanov Conspiracy is a high-tension story of trust and betrayal, of a fight between good and evil, and of love and friendship, set in one o the most bloody and brutal revolutions in world history.
The third novel in the series sees new challenges for the men of the 106th Foot, as the British army attempts to recover from the disaster of Corunna and establish a foothold in the Peninsula. Featuring the battles of Medellin and Talavera, the 106th will have their mettle severely tested on the battlefield. But if Napoleon is to be ejected from Spain, war must also be waged in more covert ways. For Hanley, the former artist who is a more natural observer than fighter, the opportunity to become an 'exploring officer' leads him into even more dangerous territory, the murky world of politics and partisans. And while Ensign Williams seeks to uncover the identity of the mysterious 'Heroine of Saragossa', a conspiracy of revenge within the regiment itself threatens to destroy him before he's even faced a shot from the French.
Spartacus: Rebellion by Ben Kane. UK release August 16, 2012.
The mighty slave army led by Spartacus has carried all before it, shredding the armies of three praetors, two consuls and one proconsul. Outside Mutina (Modena) on the plain of the River Po, he has defeated Gaius Cassius Longinus, proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul and general of an army of two legions. Now the road home lies before them - to Thrace for Spartacus and to Gaul for his seconds-in-command, Castus and Gannicus. But storm clouds are massing on the horizon. Crixus the Gaul, once Spartacus's most powerful general, has defected, taking his men with him. In Rome, the hugely rich Marcus Licinius Crassus will be given ten legions and told to put an end to the slave rebellion - whatever it takes. Meanwhile a potentially fatal difference of opinion is opening up between Spartacus on the one hand and Castus and Gannicus on the other. He wants to lead his men over the Alps and away home. They want to turn back south and march on Rome itself, believing that the Republic can be brought to its knees. This division between the warrior commanders will lead to a critical turning point in the course of history and bring Spartacus himself to his day of reckoning. Rebellion has become war. War to the death.
Before she became the nineteenth-century’s heroine, before he had written a word of Madame Bovary, Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert traveled up the Nile at the same time. In reality, they never met. But in award-winning author Enid Shomer’s The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, they ignite a friendship marked by intelligence, humor, and a ravishing tenderness that will alter both their destinies.
On the surface, Nightingale and Flaubert have little in common. She is a woman with radical ideas about society and God, naive in the ways of men. He is a notorious womanizer, involved with innumerable prostitutes. But both are at painful crossroads in their lives and burn with unfulfilled ambition. In Enid Shomer’s deft hands, the two unlikely soulmates come together to share their darkest torments and fervent hopes. Brimming with adventure and the sparkling sensibilities of the two travelers, this mesmerizing debut novel offers a luminous combination of gorgeous prose and wild imagination, all of it colored by the opulent tapestry of mid-nineteenth century Egypt.
A Most Beautiful Deception/The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis. US and UK release September 11, 2012.
A sweeping, intense historical thriller starring two of the great minds of Renaissance Italy: Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci. Based on a real historical mystery, and involving serial murder and a gruesome cat and mouse game at the highest levels of the Church -- it was the era of the infamous Borgias -- A Most Beautiful Deception is a delicious treat for fans of Umberto Eco, Sarah Dunant, and Elizabeth Kostova.
This brilliant novel is an epic tale exploring the backdrop of the most controversial work of the Italian Renaissance, The Prince. Here, Niccolò Machiavelli, the great "scientist" of human behaviour becomes, in effect, the first criminal profiler, while his contemporary and sometime colleague, the erratic genius Leonardo da Vinci, brings his observational powers to the increasingly desperate hunt for a brilliant, terrifying serial murderer. Their foil and partner is the exquisite Damiata, scholar and courtesan. All three know their quarry is someone who holds enormous power, both to tear Italy apart, and destroy each of their most beloved dreams. And every thrilling step is based on historical fact.
Betrayal by Julian Stockwin. UK release October 11, 2012.
Cape Colony is proving a tiresome assignment for Captain Kydd's daring commander-in-chief Commodore Popham. Rumours that South America's Spanish colonies are in a ferment of popular unrest and of a treasure hoard of silver spur him to assemble a makeshift invasion fleet and launch a bold attack on the capital of the Viceroyalty of the River Plate, Buenos Aires.
Navigating the treacherous bars and mud flats of the river, the British invasion force lands and wins a battle against improbable odds, taking the capital and the silver. But nothing is as simple as it seems in this region of the world: the uprising that will see the end of Spanish rule never arrives and the locals begin to see dark conspiracies behind the invader's actions. Soon the tiny British force finds itself surrounded by an ever more hostile population. The city begins to revolt against its liberators.
Now Kydd's men must face fierce resistance and the betrayal of their closest allies. Can they save themselves, and their prize?
The Wolf’s Gold (Empire V) by Anthony Riches. UK release October 25, 2012.
In the wake of their victory in Germania, Marcus and the Tungrians have been sent east to Dacia, the land of the wolf, with the mission to safeguard a major source of imperial power. Containing enough gold to pave the road to Rome, the mines of Alburnus Major would make a mighty prize for the marauding tribesmen who threaten the province, and the outnumbered auxiliaries are entrusted with their safety in the face of a barbarian invasion.
Beset by both the Sarmatian horde and the more subtle threats offered by men who should be their comrades, the Tungrians must also come to terms with the danger posed by a new and unexpected enemy.
The wolf is stirring...
Bosworth: The Rise of the Tudors by Christopher Hibbert. Non-fiction. UK release May 13, 2013.
The Battle of Bosworth has a legendary significance in British history. The last battle fought on English soil until the seventeenth century, and the last occasion that an English king would die on the battlefield, it was also the battle that brought an end to the dynasty of Plantagenet kings who had ruled since 1154, and heralded the birth of the Tudor dynasty. Yet the story of Bosworth is more than just the result of a few hours bloodshed on the battlefield. It is the culmination of the rise of the House of Tudor, a remarkable story which began fifty years earlier, when a page of Henry V's ran off with his widow.
It is the tale of the turbulent life of Henry Tudor, who, against the odds, rose from relatively humble origins and exile in France to overthrow the deeply unpopular Richard III. When this inexperienced young soldier landed in England in 1485 with 2,000 French mercenaries and a handful Lancastrian lords and knights, few could have predicted his campaign would end in with him seizing the throne of England. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished sources as well as new research that has only recently come to light, Chris Skidmore will disentangle fact from legend and relate the compelling story of the battle in full. BOSWORTH will also set the battle against the background of the storms of the Wars of the Roses, and paint a vivid portrait of this time of immense political ferment and social change.
There is a sequel to Wolf Hall? I obviously need to get around to reading that book so I can be ready for the sequel.
January 3, 2012 7:51 PM
Every time you post this my TBR gets longer. Lol.
January 3, 2012 8:08 PM
Madame Serpent looks good - I haven't read too many Plaidy books (need to remedy that). The Men Who Would Be King sounds good too and would be great for my reading challenge. And of course I'm looking forward to The Kingmaker's Daughter. Love Philippa Gregory! I hadn't heard of The King's Damsel before, but that's definitely going on my wishlist.
Amber
The Musings of ALMYBNENR
January 3, 2012 10:01 PM