The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson

Praise forThe Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette'I readThe Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinettein two days, and when I finished it, I reread the final pages, as hungry for more as a child scraping the last crumbs of chocolate cake off her plate with her fingers.

In The Last Wife of Henry VIII, critically acclaimed author Carolly Erickson brings this dramatic story of survival and redemption to life.

Catherine won the contest, but at great cost. Her triumph was shadowed by rivalry with the young Princess Elizabeth, whose lands and influence the lecherous Seymour coveted. She was spared by his death and married the attractive but dangerously unbalanced Seymour. She managed to evade execution, but she knew that the king had his wandering eye fixed on wife number seven. King Henry toyed with her, first ordering her arrested, then granting her clemency. While victims of the king's wrath suffered torture and execution, Catherine persevered-until, at last, she came within the orbit of the royal fury. Catherine Parr attracted the king's lust and, though much in love with the handsome Thomas Seymour, was thrown into the intrigue-filled snake pit of the royal court. Her story, as Carolly Erickson re-creates it, is page-turning drama: from the splendors of the Field of the Cloth of Gold to the gory last years of the outsize King Henry, when heads rolled and England trembled, Catherine bestrode her destiny and survived to marry her true love. Author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette Courageous, attractive, romantic, intelligent, Catherine Parr became the sixth wife of Henry VIII.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. But when her relations turn against her, she finds herself doomed, just as her cousin Anne Boleyn was, to face the executioner. 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.Īs 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. From New York Times best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII, a novel about Catherine Howard, wife of Henry's later yearsĪmid 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.

The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson