The story follows the intrigue and seemingly impossible rise to power of Isabella, who along with her husband, Ferdinand, built Castile into a world power. Isabella assumed personal responsibility for the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the new world.

“A masterwork by a skilled craftsman . . . Make a vow to read this book.”—New York Journal of BooksIsabella is barely a teenager when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone her half brother, King Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is d...

In this stunning novel, C. W. Gortner brings to life Juana of Castile, the third child of Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand of Spain, who would become the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit her country’s throne. Along the way, Gortner takes the reader from the somber majesty of Spain to the glittering and lethal courts of Flanders, France, and Tudor England.Born amid her parents’ ruthless struggle to unify and strengthen their kingdom, Juana, at the age of sixtee...

Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. Iberia is Michener’s enduring nonfiction tribute to his cherished second home. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he...

The incredible Incas may have built South America's greatest civilisation, but they could be very icky indeed! The poor prisoners they pulled up their huge pyramids were likely to experience a very painful death. But things weren't much better for your average Inca. Find out... * How a bucket of stewed pee could make you beautiful * Why servants ate the emperor's hair * What happened in their legendary golden temples * What chilling fate awaited their child sacrifices The Incan Empire rule...

An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in historyBorn at a time when Christianity was dying out and the Ottoman Empire was aggressively expanding, Isabella was inspired in her youth by tales of Joan of Arc, a devout young woman who unified her people and l...

From the acclaimed author of Warriors of God comes a riveting account of the pivotal events of 1492, when towering political ambitions, horrific religious excesses, and a drive toward international conquest changed the world forever.James Reston, Jr., brings to life the epic story of Spain’s effort to consolidate its own burgeoning power by throwing off the yoke of the Vatican. By waging war on the remaining Moors in Granada and unleashing the Inquisitor Torquemada on Spain’s Jewi...

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smouldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI - the notorious Rodrigo Borgia - issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (a...

This selective history of Portugal reflects the author’s fascination with his own Portuguese/Madeiran heritage. The work tracks the nation’s rise and fall as a world power, drawing from the author’s travels and archival research.“Dos Passos,” writes historian J. H. Plumb, “brings to his material a novelist’s acute eye for human character and a narrative skill that any historian might envy; and he has produced one of the most readable books on the subject that I know.”

This enthralling study which examines the impact of the Spaniards upon the Aztec and Inca worlds is dominated by the personalities involved, in particular Cortes and Montezuma. Their confrontation in the Aztec lake-city of Tenochtitlan is a moving drama of human conflict revealing the dilemma and the enigma of the Indians. It is a story of battles and voyages, full of strange episodes – Cortes burning his ships, Pizarro drawing a line with his sword, saying "Gentlemen, this line represents...

In the sixteenth century the King of Spain issued his soldiers with a three-pronged mission: to find gold, spread the word of Christianity and claim new territories for Spain. The Conquistadors, as they became known, set off into the world to do just that, and nothing was to stand in their way. Some say that the discovery of the New World is the greatest event in history. Others, that it amounted to the bloodiest massacre of all time. Conquistadors follows the Spanish explorers as they unl...

**"A thrilling quest for justice... [A] novel that is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.” —The New York Times Book Review“A page-turner in the proper sense… Mr. Carr has written a gripping and enjoyable novel.” —The Wall Street JournalThe gripping story of the dangerous high-stakes worlds of politics and religion in sixteenth-century Spain as a mysterious Muslim killer retaliates against the Catholic Chur...