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Product Description
Fans of bestselling authors Anne Perry and Ellis Peters are sure to love Karen Harper's new historical mystery series, rich with period detail and featuring Elizabeth Tudor, the future queen of England, as its heroine.
Living in exile in the English countryside, the twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth awaits her fate during the waning years of her ill and childless half sister's reign. Despite an occasional truce, there has always been bad blood between Queen Mary and the princess since Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, replaced Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in the heart of King Henry VIII. Mary has already sent Elizabeth to the Tower of London when a group of Protestants raise a rebellion in her name, forcing Mary to release her, and the half sisters into an uneasy détente.
Little does Elizabeth know that in the autumn of 1558, she will be called upon to explore not only England's rural heartland, but also her own heart. At great risk to her person and her nation's future, she plunges herself into an investigation of a multiple murder where she might very well become a master poisoner's next victim.
Amazon.com Review
Imagine a cross between the films Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love (without the latter's jokes) and you'll get some idea of this first entry in Karen Harper's Bess Tudor series of historical mysteries. It's 1558, and the 25-year-old Elizabeth, her life and family threatened by the dying, jealous Queen Mary, actually dresses up like a boy and slips off to Hever Castle. There she bonds with the spirit of her mother, Anne Boleyn, and solves several murders.
In lesser hands, such a plot might seem unlikely. But, as she has done in such previous books as Black Orchid, Dark Road Home, and Empty Cradle, Harper stills disbelief and quickens interest with her impeccable research and competent prose. The former high school English teacher knows how to create characters that leap to life despite the accumulated weight of previous books and films: her Elizabeth is a smart, sad, tough, and feisty original, fully worthy of both her mother and her father's heritage. It should be great fun to watch her grow and solve future mysteries. --Dick Adler
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