Recommendations based on "Innocent Traitor"

'An outstanding work' – Philippa Gregory 'A powerful narrative told with frankness and sensitivity' Helen Fry, historian and author of Women In Intelligence

Margaret George's exhaustively researched novel skillfully weaves both historical fact and plausible fiction in bringing the story of Mary Queen of Scots to life.She was a child crowned a queen....A sinner hailed as a saint....A lover denounced as a whore...A woman murdered for her dreams...Margaret George's Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles brings to life the fascinating story of Mary, who became the Queen of Scots when she was only six days old. Raised in the glittering French court, returning to Scotland to rule as a Catholic monarch over a newly Protestant country, and executed like a criminal in Queen Elizabeth's England, Queen Mary lived a life like no other, and Margaret George weaves the facts into a stunning work of historical fiction."With a seamless use of original letters, diaries, and poems: a popular, readable, inordinately moving tribute to a remarkable queen." -- Kirkus Reviews

Set in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire"A hugely unnerving theatrical experience, shot through with the language of the Bible and a genuinely poetic richness" (Time Out)"A dramatic poem in the late-Beckett style, sometimes a chamber quartet for lost voices" (The Times)Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in September 1998.

The Grddha Mullicks take pride in the ancient lineage they trace from four hundred years before Christ. They burst with marvellous tales of hangmen and hangings in which the Grddha Mullicks figure as eyewitnesses to the momentous events that have shaped the history of the subcontinent. In the present day, Chetna, the youngest member of the family, is appointed the first woman executioner in India. Thrust suddenly into the public eye, Chetna's life explodes under the harsh lights of television cameras. As the day of her first execution approaches, she breaks out of the shadow of a domineering father and the thrall of a brutally manipulative lover, transforming into a charismatic performer in her own right. Meera's spectacular imagination turns the story of Chetna's life into an epic and perverse coming-of-age tale. Will the ardent young woman be able to escape the love that binds her? Will she add lustre to the illustrious name of Grddha Mullick? Or will she succumb to the dazzle of celebrity and the thrill of power over life and death? The lurid pleasures of voyeurism and the punishing ironies of violence are kept in agile balance as the drama hurtles to its inevitable climax.

Rachel and Rose, now women with grown children of their own, find themselves face-to-face at last with the destiny that has haunted them for nearly half a century, since the two were switched at birth in the chaos of a hospital fire. What confronts them now threatens to uproot a lifetime of deeply buried secrets: the impending marriage of Rose's capable and caring son to Rachel's emotionally troubled daughter. Once again the two women and their families are pitted against each other ... just as Rachel learns that her mother, Sylvie, is dying. Only Rose knows that Sylvie is in reality her mother - and she yearns to be recognized as Sylvie's own before it's too late. A widow coping with the loss of her husband - yet powerfully attracted to an engaging talk-show host recovering from wounds of his own - Rose turns to her mother for help. In frail health, but still strong in spirit, Sylvie must choose between the intricate web of lies behind which she shields her loved ones ... and a truth that will shatter the lives of both her daughters - as well as that of her fragile granddaughter - before it can begin to heal them.

Lucia, mayor of Tilling and leader of local society faces a new challenge from her social rival Elizabeth Mapp-Flint

Mary Tudor is often written off as a hopeless, twisted queen who tried desperately to pull England back to the Catholic Church that was so dear to her mother, and sent many to burn at the stake in the process. In this radical re-evaluation of the first 'real' English queen regnant, Judith M. Richards challenges her reputation as 'Bloody Mary' of popular historical infamy, contending that she was closer to the more innovative, humanist side of the Catholic Church. Richards argues persuasively that Mary, neither boring nor basically bloody, was a much more hard-working, 'hands on', and decisive queen than is commonly recognized. Had she not died in her early forties and failed to establish a Catholic succession, the course of history could have been very different, England might have remained Catholic and Mary herself may even have been treated more kindly by history. This illustrated and accessible biography is essential reading for all those with an interest in one of England's most misrepresented monarchs.

A compelling novel about four young women in wartime London, from the best-selling author of London Belles and My Sweet Valentine. In Article Row, in London’s Holborn – four young women, Tilly, Sally, Dulcie and Agnes – have already been witnesses to the heartache and pain that Hitler’s bombs have inflicted on ordinary Londoners.Tilly is desperate to wed her beau, Drew. Terrified that something will happen to prevent them from being together, her fears seem to be coming true when he is called back home to America.For her mother, Olive, this only adds to her worries for Tilly. But she has her own hands full when her friend and neighbour, Sergeant Dawson, gets some terrible news. When Olive lends a hand, she finds herself at the sharp end of some unwelcome gossip.For Dulcie, the war has brought an old flame, David, back into her life. But his terrible injuries have changed his life forever. Can something more develop out of their friendship? And for Agnes, she is about to find out something that will change her life, too.In this seemingly endless war, the girls will learn about love, loss and heartache. But they, like thousands of other Londoners, are determined to win the battle on the home front – no matter what it takes.

First a rich man's mistress, then a frontier wife, and now a widow...With her two children, half-blind Willy and her adopted daughter, Josefina, Tilly returns to Highfield Manor, where she'd worked as a nursemaid all those years ago.Now a rich woman, Highfield, the estate and mine are hers.  At 35, Tilly is white-haired, but as spirited and as magnetic to men as ever.  Her reputation as a witch continues to grow among the villagers, ever hostile and suspicious, but she is supported by faithful friends and warm memories.Life still has much in store for Tilly:  old loves and enmities provide fresh challenges, and the final shaping of her destiny provides the theme for an absorbing and vividly dramatic story.

"A Mixture of Frailties", the third volume of Robertson Davies "Salterton" Trilogy, is his first extended engagement with one of the great neuroses of Canadian culture: Canada's artistic relationship to Europe, and particularly to Britain. Davies begins his story with the funeral of Louisa Bridgetower, the Salterton matron whose imposing presence ranges throughout the earlier volumes of the "Salterton" Trilogy. The substantial income from her estate is to be used to send an unmarried young woman to Europe to pursue an education in the arts. Mrs. Bridgetower's executors end up selecting Monica Gall, an almost entirely unschooled singer whose sole experience comes from performing with the Heart and Hope Gospel Quartet, a rough outfit sponsored by a small fundamentalist group. Monica soon finds herself in England, a pupil of some of Britain's most remarkable teachers and composers, and she gradually blossoms from a Canadian rube to a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique - and tragicomic - career.