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The fictionalized account of one of 19th-century England's most notorious scandals, by one of Britain's premier historical novelists. In this story, so full of excitement and mystery that it would seem incredible fiction if it were not based on real life, Jean Plaidy has created a fascinating portrait of one woman's tragic life.

Richard the Second is losing his hold on the crown and Henry of Bolingbroke, previously exiled by the king, returns to England to claim it. Richard is deposed and dies mysteriously, murdered some say on the orders of Bolingbroke, now King Henry the Fourth. But Henry finds the crown harder to hold onto than it was to win. He is beset by enemies, hampered by disease, and concerned about the rebellious behaviour of his son. Dominating the court and with his eye on the crown is Harry of Monmouth, whose reckless conduct in low-class taverns with his crony Sir John Oldcastle causes scandal.When the king dies, Harry became King Henry the Fifth, and the change is dramatic for both him and Oldcastle. The licentious youth becomes a great king, and Oldcastle, the rake, turns into a religious reformer. Oldcastle dies a martyr and Harry becomes the conquering hero of Agincourt. The Star of Lancaster is in the ascendant. Harry has brought France to her knees and married her princess. It seems that the long war was at an end. But a greater enemy than the French awaits Harry...

A private battle rages at court for the affections of a childless queen, who must soon name her successor - and thus determine the future of the British Empire.

It is the beginning of the eighteenth century and William of Orange is dying. Soon Anne is crowned queen, but to court insiders, the name of the imminent sovereign is Sarah Churchill. Beautiful, outspoken Sarah has bewitched Anne and believes she is invincible--until she installs her poor cousin Abigail Hill into court as royal chambermaid.

Plain Abigail seems the least likely challenger to Sarah's place in her highness's affections, but challenge it she does, in stealthy yet formidable ways. While Anne engages in her private tug-of-war, the nation is obsessed with another, more public battle: succession. Anne is sickly and childless, the last of the Stuart line.

This final novel of the Stuarts from Jean Plaidy weaves larger-than-life characters through a dark maze of intrigue, love, and destruction, with nothing less than the future of the British Empire at stake.

Although the young widow Maria Fitzherbert is a commoner and a Catholic, her dashing suitor is none other than the Prince of Wales, whose unquestioned royal duty is to marry a Protestant Princess.

In an age well accustomed to royal mistresses, Maria is as virtuous as she is beautiful. Rather than succumb, she flees to France...only to be irresistibly drawn back to England and into the arms of her Prince—and a passionate relationship that may well cost the Prince his throne.

Set against the backgrounds of elegant London and fashionable Brighton, this turbulent, tender story of passion and politics unfolds, with all the great figures of a memorable age playing their appointed roles: The prolifigate playwright Sheridan, the shrewd William Pitt, enchanting Fanny Burney, mad King George III, and frightening Queen Charlotte, who is filled with vindictive hatred toward her rebellious son and his beloved.

Her name was Caroline of Ansbach, a woman taught the cruelties of life at an early age. Refusing to succumb to her stepfather's abominable behavior, she married George Augustus, Prince of Hanover--the man next in line to be King. With the dream of someday being Queen to sustain her, Caroline lived a life of danger and quiet desperation, as she yearned for her native Germany, as she steered a dangerous course between the King, her father-in-law, and her husband, as she quietly prepared herself for the glorious future that lay ahead if only she could play the dangerous game....

According to the legend, six novices living in a Cornish convent strayed from their vows and were turned to stone. The seventh faced quite a different fate. Years later when the convent became the family mansion of the St. Larnston family, fate beckoned to another young virgin.

Kerensa Carlee was only a cottage girl, but she possessed great ambition and greater beauty -- and she knew how to use them both. Working in the legend-haunted mansion as a lady's maid, Kerensa began her perilous journey into womanhood. She stirred old memories and mysteries, and brought to that quiet corner of Victorian Cornwall moonlight madness and an ancient vengeance...

'Beyond The Blue Mountains' set in the England and Australia of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, this is a compelling and convincing story told with vivid authenticity. 

The adventures of the bold and reckless Carolan in the East End, in Newgate Jail, and aboard the prison ship transporting her to Australia forcefully recreate the perversion, vice and cruelty of that age. 

Once in Sydney, Carolan, now a convict maid-servant seeks freedom and status. But the way she chooses to ensure her future is such that it will haunt her for the rest of her life ...

Victoria Holt demonstrates her mastery once again in her most exciting novel set in turn-of-the-century England where a young woman grows up in the shadow of the great estate - and privileged way of life - that was once her family's birthright. But a unique inheritance compels Jessica Clavering to marry the owner of a fabled opal mine and leads her to faraway Australia. There she will discover the mysteries - and evil - surrounding the greatest opal ever found. There she must confront the danger that lust for the stone has aroused even in her own husband - and there she must find love.

For Harriet Delvaney, the great house of Menfreya, standing like a fortress on the Cornish coast, had always been a citadel of happiness and high spirits. Not until she herself came to Menfreya as a bride did Harriet discover the secret family legend of infidelity, jealousy and murder. And not until the legend seemed to come dangerously to life did Harriet begin to believe the old story that when the tower clock of Menfreya stopped, someone was about to die...

Nora Tamsin was fascinated by the ruthless Charles Herrick, but she discovered that he deserved his name "The Lynx". His love for her was overwhelming and frightening. By the time she realized that his plan for her was part of his obsessive desire for revenge, it seemed too late to escape.

Green-eyed Caroline Tressidor has the whole world at her feet. But at Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Caroline lets slip a secret. It is nearly fatal.

Caroline's promising future dissolves without her knowing why. Her search for answers violates the iron rules of Victorian society. It takes her to the wild moors of Cornwall and pits her against her shy, pretty sister.

It also brings her the man of her dreams, Paul Landower ... dark, mysterious, trapped in his own past ... a past that may include a legacy of murder.

As long as she can remember, the exquisite Lenore Cleremont has lived at The Silk House, the luxurious English country estate of the wealthy Sallonger family. Neither a slave nor a servant, she has grown into a young woman who has shown promise as a dress designer. But she has also won the heart of the two charismatic Sallonger sons. Then tragedy strikes. And Lenore finds herself playing a central role in a drama that threatens to destroy everything she holds dear...

It was Lettice who married the Earl of Leicester, whom Elizabeth I loved. And it was Lettice who was the mother of the Queen's beloved Earl of Essex. That young earl would one day break the Queen's heart.

It was always Lettice, the constant spoiler in the triangle of love surrounding Elizabeth...

As a young girl in India, beautiful, high-spirited Susanna Pleydell had first became aware of her special gifts to soothe the sick. But she had sacrificed that calling when she married the dashing and sophisticated Aubrey St. Clare. When they return home to London, however, Aubrey has changed. Susanna discovers she has married a man with a weakness for opium and the occult. And even more menacing, Aubrey has met the sinister Dr. Damien Adar, whose hold over him is fierce and frightening...

According to ancient Black Forest legend, on the Night of the Seventh Moon, Loke, the God of Mischief, is at large in the world. It is a night for festivity and joyful celebration. It is a night for singing and dancing. And it is a night for love.

Helena Trant was enchanted by everything she found in the Black Forest - especially its legends. But then, on the Night of the Seventh Moon, she started to live one of them, and the enchantment turned suddenly into a terrifying nightmare...

Noelle Tremaston's charmed yet unconventional life as the daughter of the infamous Desiree, darling of the London stage, comes crashing to a halt when her mother takes in a struggling ingenue and disaster strikes. Noelle flees to Paris where, on the eve of World War I, a bizarre twist of fate will lead her into unsolved mysteries — and the arms of love.

From the moment young Suewellyn caught her first glimpse of the Mateland family castle, she knew she had to possess it. But how could the beautiful illegitimate child ever aspire to such a dream? The answer lay in a perilous deception. Her masquerade succeeded -- too well. Caught in a web of her own creation, Suewellyn found herself faced with a final, desperate choice between happiness and life itself...

Cordelia Grant wonders if she is dreaming after she sees a handsome stranger in the forest at the time of the hunter's moon, when legends say a girl will see her future husband. Haunted by the memory of this mystery man, Cordelia begins a new life as schoolmistress at a girl's academy and finds herself pursued by Jason Verringer, a dashing land baron with a scandalous reputation: It is rumored that Jason murdered his wife and mistress. But he has invaded her thoughts and is competing with the memory of the handsome stranger. Now Cordelia's destiny depends on finding out the truth about two very different men.

From the day Favel came to Pendorric as the bride of Roc Pendorric she was drawn more and more under the spell of the place. For hundreds of years the house had stood there on the Cornish cliffs, towering above’ the sea, noble and arrogant as if defying sea and weather and any who came against it. But more forbidding to Favel than the house itself was the legend that hung about it of the curse of the Brides of Pendorric. The bride before her was the beautiful and incomparable Barbarina, and the spirit of Barbarina and her tragedy broods over all the ominous events of Favel’s own story.

Abandoned as a baby, her exotic beauty prompted hushed whispers of gypsy blood. But lovely Carmel March remained shrouded in mystery....

When tragedy struck her adopted home of Commonwood House, little Carmel had been bundled off to Australia. Returning to England as a young woman, she became haunted by questions from her past, as well as the shocking revelation that she had been rushed from a murder scene those many years ago.

Yet she was convinced that the wrong man had been sentenced for the crime. Was the answer locked away in her childhood memory -- or in the dark, secretive behavior of her old childhood friend, Lucian? And what fateful role did the opals -- always present at crucial moments of her life -- play? For only when she released the dark secrets imprisoned at Commonwood would she find the freedom to love.

Davina Glentyre's happy young life in Edinburgh was shattered by her mother's death and made even more unbearable by her father's sudden marriage to her new governess. Her one joy was her friendship with a poor but charming student, Jamie, whom her father forbade her to wed. When her father suddenly died from arsenic poisoning, the means, motive, and opportunity all pointed to Davina herself. Alone, she escaped to the colonies in Africa. But with the Boer War came danger and the return of dark secrets from the past that threatened her reputation and her very life.

The unforgettable story of Marie Antoinette, from her pampered childhood in imperial Vienna, to the luxury and splendor of her days as Queen of France, to her tragic end upon the scaffold in the bloodbath of the Revolution...