Fiction

First she was Margaret the refugee. A Saxon princess, sister of Edgar Atheling who, but for William the Conqueror, would have been King of England. She came to Scotland in 1069. Beautiful, sympathetic and devout, whe was an unlikely consort to the rough and ready Malcolm King of Scots and slayer of MacBeth, a man who cared for little other than hunting, drinking and the brutal arts of war. Yet, through her gentle strength of character and intelligence, she was to have a profound and lasting effect on her adopted nation and people that lasts to this day

Historians have long whispered that Elizabeth "the Virgin Queen's" passionate, lifelong affair with Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester, may have led to the birth of a son, Arthur Dudley. In this exquisite sequel to The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Robin Maxwell fashions a stunning fictional account of the child switched at birth by a lady-in-waiting who foresaw the deleterious political consequences of a royal bastard. Set against the sweeping, meticulously rendered backdrop of court intrigues, international scandals, and England's battle against the Spanish Armada, The Queen's Bastard deftly juxtaposes Elizabeth and Leicester's tumultuous relationship with the memoirs of the adventurous son lost to them -- yet ultimately discovered.

This is the story of Nell who lives with her grandmother, the local cunning woman and healer, in a west country village in the seventeenth century. When one of the minister's daughters falls pregnant she and her sister attempt to conceal it by accusing Nell of putting a curse on them. The witchfinder general, Matthew Hopkins, is called in and in an atmosphere of fear, the local villagers turn nasty and Nell's grandmother falls victim to their hatred. Nell is all alone, and in great danger . . .

A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring retelling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked even as Christianity gains favor, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores. Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its focal point, Gudrid's narrative describes a multilayered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail.

In fourteenth-century France, a young woman from the mountain village of Montaillou was tried for heresy by the Catholic inquisition. Her name was Grazida Lizier and, by her own confession, her “joy was shared” with the wrong man: the village rector.