From the New York Times –bestselling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII, a novel about the second of Henry's wives to end her life on the hangman's scaffold."Carolly Erickson turns cold fact to hot fiction."― India Edghill, author of Wisdom's DaughterAmid the turbulent, faction-ridden late reign of the fearsome Henry, eager ...

From The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII comes a powerful and moving novel about Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, who married him only days after the execution of Anne Boleyn and ultimately lost her own life in giving him the son he badly needed to guarantee the Tudor successionBorn into an ambitious noble family, young Jane Seymour is sent to Court as a Maid of Honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VI...

"[A] smoothly written biography" of the misunderstood eighteenth-century French queen executed during the revolution ( Publishers Weekly )."An extraordinary life. . . . Ms. Erickson gives us a likable, empathetic women and broadens our understanding of her." — The New York Times Book ReviewOne of history's most misunderstood figures, Marie Antoin...

From the bestselling author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette comes a dramatic novel and powerful love story about the last Russian imperial family.It is 1989 and Daria Gradov is an elderly grandmother living in the rural West. What neighbors and even her children don't know, however, is that she is not who she claims to be—the widow of a Russian immigrant of modest means. In actuality she began her life as the Grand Duchess Tatiana, known as Tania to her parents, Tsa...

Imagine that, on the night before she is to die under the blade of the guillotine, Marie Antoinette leaves behind in her prison cell a diary telling the story of her life—from her privileged childhood as Austrian Archduchess to her years as glamorous mistress of Versailles to the heartbreak of imprisonment and humiliation during the French Revolution.Carolly Erickson takes the reader deep into the psyche of France's doomed queen: her love affair with handsome Swedish diplomat Count ...

"An entertaining history of English rulers from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II" is presented in a series of colorful mini-biographies ( Publishers Weekly ).From a medieval warrior to a Renaissance autocrat, and from a Victorian Empress to the tabloid royals of today, Royal Panoply offers a revealing look at some of the most fascinating people in world history.With her trademark blend of probing scho...

Author of The Hidden Diary of Marie AntoinetteCourageous, attractive, romantic, intelligent, Catherine Parr became the sixth wife of Henry VIII. Her story, as Carolly Erickson re-creates it, is page-turning drama: from the splendors of the Field of the Cloth of Gold to the gory last years of the outsize King Henry, when heads rolled and England trembled, Catherine bestrode her destiny and survived to marry her true love.Catherine Parr attracted the king's lust and, t...

The lives and deaths of the Romanov family are redolent with colour and drama, but the personal life of the beautiful Tsarina Alexandra has remained enigmatic. Under Erickson's masterful scrutiny the full dimensions of the Empress's singular psychology are revealed: her childhood bereavement, her long struggle to attain her romantic goal of marriage to her handsome cousin Nicholas, anguishing shyness, the struggles with her in-laws, a false pregnancy, her increasing eccentricities as she b...

"An exquisitely realistic portrait of Tudor England" sets the stage for royal romantic rivalry in this "compelling" novel from a New York Times bestseller ( Library Journal).From the *New York Times–*bestselling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII comes a novel about the rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and her cousin, Lettice Knollys, for the love of one extraordinary man.Powerful, dramatic and full of the rich history that has ...

"Alexandra's story is heartbreaking" and this New York Times–bestselling author "excels in the details" in this biography of the last Russian Empress ( Chicago Tribune).Taking advantage of material unavailable until the fall of the Soviet Union, Erickson portrays Alexandra's story as a closely observed, enthrallingly documented, progressive psychological retreat from reality.The lives of the Romanovs were full of color and drama, but the per...

From the New York Times– bestselling author of The Last Tsarina, a "fascinating" fictionalized memoir featuring Mary Stuart as she tells her dramatic life story ( Sacramento Book Review ).Born Queen of Scotland, married as a young girl to the invalid young King of France, Mary took the reins of the unruly kingdom of Scotland as a young...

The bestselling author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and The Last Wife of Henry VIII returns with an enchanting novel about one of the most seductive women in history: Josephine Bonaparte, first wife of Napoleon.Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Josephine had an exotic Creole appeal that would ultimately propel her to reign over an empire as wife of the most powerful man in the world. But her life is a story of ambition and danger, of luck and ...