Blood Royal

A riveting true story of murder and detection in 15th-century Paris, by one of the most brilliant medievalists of his generation. On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer -- and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. A rich portrait of a distant world, Blood Royal is a gripping story of conspiracy, crime and an increasingly desperate hunt for the truth. And in Guillaume de Tignonville, we have an unforgettable detective for the ages, a classic gumshoe for a cobblestoned era.

An engaging history of royal and imperial families and dynastic power, enriched by a body of surprising and memorable source material.

The latest entry in this acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels, Blood Royal continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for—while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask. In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.

Forced by Sir Robert Walpole into a distasteful marriage and then ruined by her husband, Lady Cecily Fitzhenry vows revenge on the Prime Minister and the creaking Hanoverian court. Lady Cecily turns her hand to highway robbery and spying for the Old Pretender while transforming her sole remaining asset, a ruinous tavern on the Great North Road, into a great coaching inn. But in trying to save her people from the notorious Black Acts and encroaching slavery laws, Cecily finds a new cause to fight for and she begins to doubt if the restoration of the Stuarts is really the answer. And eventually, Cecily saves her country and herself in ways she had never imagined... This gripping historical saga of intrigue and bravery is perfect for fans of Elizabeth Chadwick and Kate Mosse. ’Diana Norman always strikes gold’ The Times

Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, was an ordinary young woman who was picked to be the future queen. Her wedding was a worldwide sensation. But she was deceived and betrayed before the honeymoon was over. Five months after a fairy tale wedding, she threw herself down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant with a future heir to the throne. Suicide attempts, illicit affairs, and paranoia that there were plots by the Royals to kill her became the norm as the fairy tale turned into a horror story. After suffering degradation and humiliation at the hands of her husband, the heir to the British throne, she shot him with one of his own antique pistols. Paranoid that her own attorneys would deceive her, the princess reaches across the Atlantic to hire someone she knows for certain has no ties to the Crown. Marlowe James is an American trial lawyer. Running away from an abusive home, she supported herself by working as a waitress, rising to become a famous trial lawyer. Marlowe James has been dubbed the "burning bed lawyer" by the news media because of her successful defense of women who killed their abusive husbands. And to top that, she was the accused in her first murder trial. Now she not only has to do battle in the Old Bailey with barristers loyal to the Crown, she has to come to grips with her own feelings about a woman who has been handed everything any woman would desire---and throws it all away. The explosive tale that will be exposed in the courtroom is one of jealous rage and unfulfilled desires, of sexual deceit by one of the most powerful men on earth---and the bloody revenge enacted by a woman scorned.

A story of murder, mystery and espionage (with a dash of romance) set in London in the long, hot summer of 1922, against the backdrop the Romanov murders and the disappearance of the Tsar's fortune. A beautiful and traumatized young Russian woman turns herself in at the British consulate in Russia, begging to be sent to relatives in England and rescued from the mysterious tragedies of her past. But is she what she seems, or is she a deadly spy on a secret mission?

A royal wedding brings Lady Georgiana Rannoch to Transylvania and lands her in a truly draining state of affairs in the fourth mystery in the New York Times bestselling Royal Spyness series. London, 1932. With her hateful brother Binky in town, Georgie has been desperately seeking an escape. So when an invitation from the Queen of England arrives asking her to represent the royals at a wedding in Transylvania—legendary home of vampires—she's delighted to accept. But when the bride starts acting a little batty and a prominent wedding guest is poisoned, something must be done lest the couple's vows become "till undeath do they part..."

A shocking tale of betrayal, lust and warring kingdoms, from acclaimed creator Alejandro Jodorowsky! Wounded, betrayed and left for dead, King Alvar returns to his kingdom to regain his stolen throne. Hungry for revenge, Alvar finds himself in the middle of a bloody political game for power. To keep his throne he must crush his enemies who would destroy him with their machinations. But his own horrific appetites may prove his undoing¡­