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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:21 pm

Machiavelli by Miles Unger. Non-fiction. US paperback release June 19, 2012.

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.
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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:21 pm

The Island House by Posie Gramie-Evans. US and UK release June 26, 2012. Cover may not be final

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.
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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:22 pm

Madame Serpent by Jean Plaidy. US reissue July 3, 2012. cover may not be final

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...
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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:23 pm

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…

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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:23 pm

The Men Who Would be King by Josephine Ross. Non-fiction. US paperback reissue July 10, 2012.

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.
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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:24 pm

Machiavelli: The Novel by Joseph Markulin. US and UK release August 1, 2012.

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.
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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:25 pm

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.

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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:27 pm

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.

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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:28 pm

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.

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Post by Tanzanite » Tue January 3rd, 2012, 11:29 pm

The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade. US and UK release August 7, 2012.

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.
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