Doomed Queen Anne

A complicated and much-hated Tudor queen tells her side of the story in this engaging novel of Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn was born without great beauty, wealth, or title, but she has blossomed into a captivating young woman—and she knows it. Determined to rise to the top, she uses her wiles to win the heart of England’s most powerful man, King Henry VIII. Not satisfied with the king’s heart, however, she persuades Henry to defy everyone—including his own wife—to make her his new queen. But Anne’s ambition would prove to be her fatal flaw. Named a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, among other honors, Doomed Queen Anne is part of the historical fiction Young Royals series that has illuminated the youthful lives of Europe’s most compelling—and sometimes, infamous—queens and princesses.

In 1520, thirteen-year-old Anne Boleyn, jealous of her older sister's beauty and position at court, declares that she will one day be queen of England, and that her sister will kneel at her feet.

A “gripping historical drama” that tells the story of young Elizabeth Tudor’s journey to the throne—and her fierce rivalry with her half sister (School Library Journal). Imprisonment. Betrayal. Lost love. Murder. What more must a princess endure? Elizabeth Tudor’s teenage and young adult years during the turbulent reigns of Edward and then Mary Tudor are hardly those of a fairy-tale princess. Her mother has been beheaded by Elizabeth's own father, Henry VIII. Her jealous half sister, Mary, has her locked away in the Tower of London. And her only love interest betrays her in his own quest for the throne… Told in the voice of the young Elizabeth and ending when she is crowned queen, this novel in the exciting Young Royals series explores the relationship between two sisters who became mortal enemies. New York Times-bestselling author Carolyn Meyer has written an intriguing historical tale that reveals the deep-seated rivalry between a determined girl who became Elizabeth I, one of England's most powerful monarchs—and the sister who tried everything to stop her.

Brimming with intrigue, romance, and adventure, a collection fit for a queen contains tales of four formidable young women who were wives or daughters of King Henry VIII in the titles, Mary, Bloody Mary; Beware, Princess Elizabeth; Doomed Queen Anne; and Patience, Princess Catherine.

Illicit love, madness, betrayal--it isn’t always good to be the queen Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends--dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there’s a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome. Kris Waldherr’s elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife--the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today’s would-be power brokers--a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.

This “rewarding historical novel” recounts the dramatic story of Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII’s six wives (Booklist). England anxiously awaits Prince Arthur’s betrothed—the Spanish princess who will be its future queen. But when Arthur dies not long after the wedding, Catherine of Aragon’s fate becomes uncertain. Will the king and Catherine’s parents arrange a marriage with Arthur’s brother, Henry, or will she return to Spain a widow? Through all the turmoil, the young princess’s resolve remains unshaken. She will one day be England’s queen—no matter how long it takes…. This novel in the Young Royals series by the New York Times-bestselling author follows Catherine as she “develops from a callow young girl into a woman who fights for her rights as much as the times permitted” (School Library Journal).

From New York Times bestselling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII, a novel about Catherine Howard, wife of Henry's later years Amid the turbulent, faction-ridden late reign of the fearsome Henry, eager high-spirited Catherine Howard caught the king's eye—but not before she had been the sensual plaything of at least three other men. Ignorant of her past, seeing only her youthful exuberance and believing that she could make him happy, he married her—only to discover, too late, that her heart belonged to his gentleman usher Tom Culpeper. As the net of court intrigue tightens around her, and with the Tudor succession yet again in peril because of Prince Edward's severe illness, Queen Catherine struggles to give the angry, bloated and impotent king a son. But when her relations turn against her, she finds herself doomed, just as her cousin Anne Boleyn was, to face the executioner. The Unfaithful Queen lays bare the dark underbelly of the Tudor court, with its sugared rivalries and bitter struggles for power, where a girl of noble family could find herself sent to labor among the turnspits in the kitchens or—should fortune favor her—be exalted to the throne.