On the river Sorgue in Provence lies Vaucluse la Fontaine, a village of some two hundred souls. The emerald green waters of the river turn the great wooden wheel of the old paper mill, where Jean Louis has lived from the age of eight.Now a young man, Jean Louis is excited, if a little apprehensive, as he leaves the village on his trusted mare Sorrel. He feels proud that Brother Xavier, the leader of the monks who runs the old paper mill, has asked him to deliver an important letter...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept comes an absorbing new novel about one woman's resistance during an époque that shook Paris to its very core.Paris, France: 1860's. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moul...

**The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller'A tour de force' – The Observer**Bringing sixteenth-century France vividly to life, Kate Mosse’s historical epic The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love, betrayal, war and conspiracy.Carcassonne, 1562. On the eve of the wars that will tear France apart, nineteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distincti...

From the author of the acclaimed and beloved Josephine B. Trilogy comes an enchanting historical novel that captures the drama, elegance and treachery of the court of Louis XIV of France. Louise de la Vallière, the brave and spirited child of minor nobility and an extraordinary horsewoman, falls in love with a wild stallion and uses ancient magic to tame him. This act shadows Louise throughout her life as she enters the court of the Sun King, where she captures—and then tragically loses—th...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom #1 internationally bestselling author Eva Stachniak comes this rich, engrossing tale of love, deception and scandal in eighteenth-century France.**During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favourite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is ...

A delicious holiday novella from the USA Today-bestselling author who “writes classic Regency romance at its best” (Shana Galen, author of An Affair with a Spare).The bachelors in Ella Quinn's Marriage Game series make a habit of resisting the irresistible. But during the season for giving, surrendering to temptation may be the greatest gift of all. . .A French spy, Georges, Marquis Cruzy-le-Châtel, has lived in England for years,...

From the author of the beloved Josephine B. Trilogy comes a spellbinding novel inspired by the true story of a young woman who rose from poverty to become confidante to the most powerful, provocative and dangerous woman in the 17th-century French court: the mistress of the charismatic Sun King.1660, Paris: Claudette’s life is like an ever-revolving stage set. Following an impoverished childhood spent wandering the French countryside with her family acting troupe, s...

The historical romance that began Joanna Bourne's spectacular spymaster series!She's never met a man she couldn't deceive...until now.She's braved battlefields. She's stolen dispatches from under the noses of heads of state. She's played the worldly courtesan, the naive virgin, the refined British lady, even a Gypsy boy. But Annique Villiers, the elusive spy known as the Fox Cub, has finally met the one man she can't outwit.

An epic generational tale of loves lost, promises kept, dreams broken, and monarchies shattered, To Dance with Kings is a story of passion and privilege, humble beginnings and limitless ambition.On a May morning in 1664, in the small village of Versailles, as hundreds of young aristocrats are coming to pay court to King Louis XIV, a peasant fan-maker gives birth to her first and only child, Marguerite. Determined to give her daughter a better life than the...

This enthralling confection of a novel, the first in a new trilogy, follows the transformation of a coddled Austrian archduchess into the reckless, powerful, beautiful queen Marie Antoinette.Why must it be me? I wondered. When I am so clearly inadequate to my destiny?Raised alongside her numerous brothers and sisters by the formidable empress of Austria, ten-year-old Maria Antonia knew that her idyllic existence would one day be sacrificed...

In the final installment of Sally Christie’s “tantalizing” (New York Daily News) Mistresses of Versailles trilogy, Jeanne Becu, a woman of astounding beauty but humble birth, works her way from the grimy back streets of Paris to the palace of Versailles, where the aging King Louis XV has become a jaded and bitter old philanderer. Jeanne bursts into his life and, as the Comtesse du Barry, quickly becomes his official mistress.“That beastly bourgeois Pom...

A career is blooming...A glittering French aristocrat is on the run, disguised as a British governess. England's top spy has a score to settle with her family. But as they're drawn inexorably into the intrigue and madness of Revolutionary Paris, they gamble on a love to which neither of them will admit.