Kingmaker

From beloved, RITA-award-winning author Kennedy Ryan comes the first in her gripping All the King's Men duology. In a world of haves and have-nots, Maxim Cade's family and their oil empire have it all...and he wants nothing to do with it. At odds with his mogul father, he's determined to build his own empire, even if it means traveling far from home, painted as the black sheep. Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of Maxim's rules. At a protest for the oil pipeline that threatens to mar her ancestral land forever, they meet in a flurry of stars and sparks, and that one moment changes everything. But Maxim's family is the one stealing from hers, and his father is the man she hates most. He has to lie in order to have her once, and despite the truth, he'll do anything to keep her. Even though Lennix tries to hate Maxim, too, their hearts are pointed in the same direction. The inexorable pull between them, across miles and years, will not be denied. And neither will Maxim.

From beloved, RITA-award-winning author Kennedy Ryan comes the gripping, passionate finale of the All the King's Men duology. Though surrender is what Maxim Cade demanded of Lennix Hunter's body and heart, she had other plans. They were fast-burning fascination and combustible chemistry, the son of an oil baron and the Apache daughter at war with his family, but she trusted him, and he turned out to be a thief who stole her love. Still, if what they had was a lie, why had it felt so real? Now, the man she swore to hate is about to have it all, and he wants Lennix at his side. But when the two of them are forced to face the unthinkable, their rocky foundation is tested, as is the invisible thread that seems to wind their fates together. As they navigate a treacherous political landscape in their quest for justice, Maxim and Lennix soon learn that power is a game, and they are merely the pawns and players. Facing insurmountable odds, will they win the world, or will they lose it all?

They were supposed to be pious, fruitful and submissive. The wealthiest women in the kingdom, Anne Beauchamp and her daughters were at the heart of bitter inheritance disputes. Well educated and extravagant, they lived in style and splendour but were forced to navigate their lives around the unpredictable clashes of the Cousins’ War. Were they pawns or did they exert an influence of their own? The twists and turns of Fate as well as the dynastic ambitions of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick saw Isabel married without royal permission to the Yorkist heir presumptive, George Duke of Clarence. Anne Neville was married to Edward of Lancaster, the only son of King Henry VI when her father turned his coat. One or the other was destined to become queen. Even so, the Countess of Warwick, heiress to one of the richest titles in England, could not avoid being declared legally dead so that her sons-in-law could take control of her titles and estates. Tragic Isabel, beloved by her husband, would experience the dangers of childbirth and on her death, her midwife was accused of witchcraft and murder. Her children both faced a traitor’s death because of their Plantagenet blood. Anne Neville became the wife of Richard, Duke of Gloucester having survived a forced march, widowhood and the ambitions of Isabel’s husband. When Gloucester took the throne as Richard III, she would become Shakespeare’s tragic queen. The women behind the myth suffered misfortune and loss but fulfilled their domestic duties in the brutal world they inhabited and fought by the means available to them for what they believed to be rightfully their own. The lives of Countess Anne and her daughters have much to say about marriage, childbirth and survival of aristocratic women in the fifteenth century.

Warwick the Kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick & Salisbury whose wealth and power was so great that he could effectively decide who would rule England during the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), had six sisters: Joan, Cecily, Alice, Eleanor, Katherine and Margaret. They all married powerful noblemen who fought on opposing sides during this turbulent period. The Kingmaker's Sisters examines the role that they played in late fifteenth-century England, as wives, mothers and homemakers, but also as deputies for their absent husbands, and how the struggle between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians affected them and their families. Scholarly but accessible, this is the first history of the Wars of the Roses to be written from this perspective, and will appeal to general readers, historians of the period and those with an interest in feminist history.

Presents a tale inspired by the daughters of "Kingmaker" Richard, fifteenth-century Earl of Warwick, who uses his daughters as political pawns before their strategic marriages place them on opposing sides in a royal war that will cost them everyone they love.

Gretchen always knew her trusty infinity pouch held a world full of secrets, but she didn’t imagine she was carrying around a relic that could bring down a kingdom. Or that it would land her into a boiling pot where she ends up a fugitive from the witches and wizards alike. But standing accused of a shocking crime she didn’t commit, this witch refuses to give in. An old friend in a dank sanctuary is all she has up her sleeve, and with a bit of ingenuity and kindness, she hatches a plan to be rid of the relic and clear her name. The kingdom depends on her, even if the monarchy doesn’t know it. And what does she have to lose? Only her livelihood, freedom, and a friend from the other side of the aisle.