Caterina was fifteen years old in 1452 when she bore an illegitimate child in the tiny village of Vinci. His name was Leonardo, and he was destined to change the world forever.Caterina suffered much cruelty as an unmarried mother and had no recourse when her boy was taken away from her. But no one knew the secrets of her own childhood, nor could ever have imagined the dangerous and heretical scheme she would devise to protect and watch over her remarkable son. This is her story.

"An intriguing slice of Elizabethan history." —Publishers WeeklyA book of passion, of sixteenth-century England, of greed and political ambition unto death. Historians and novelists have written extensively about the various aspects of Queen Elizabeth I's long, rich, and tumultuous life. No one has ever given us a fully realized portrait of the greatest English monarch as a young girl. Concluding her brilliant Tudor trilogy, Robin Maxwell enters this new territory by introducing Elizabeth as a romantic and vulnerable teenager dangerously awakening to sexuality with the wrong man. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was banished from the court at the age of two when her father sent Anne Boleyn to her death. Seven years later, when the gracious and immensely wealthy Catherine Parr became Henry's sixth wife, she softened the King's heart and Elizabeth was readmitted to the court. For the next four years the young princess enjoyed a warm friendship with...

Historians have long whispered that "the Virgin Queen" Elizabeth's passionate, lifelong affair with Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester, may have led to the birth of a son, Arthur Dudley. In this exquisite sequel to The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Robin Maxwell fashions a stunning fictional account of the child switched at birth by a lady-in-waiting who foresaw the deleterious political consequences of a royal bastard. Set against the sweeping, meticulously rendered backdrop of court intrigues, international scandals, and England's battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588, Maxwell deftly juxtaposes Elizabeth and Leicester's tumultuous relationship with the memoirs of the adventurous son lost to them—yet ultimately discovered.The Queen's Bastard artfully weaves two tales, the first told by Arthur Dudley himself, who, exchanged at birth by Elizabeth's intimates for a stillborn infant, grows up as a country gentleman, never knowing his true identity. A dreamer, a romantic, and...

Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII and later England's most beloved monarch, was banished by her father at the age of two, but is readmitted to the Tudor fold at nine when Henry's sixth wife, Katherine Parr, softens his heart towards Elizabeth. After Henry's death, Katherine marries Thomas Seymour, a shallow man of reckless ambition. The amoral Seymour orchestrates his master plan to capture the crown, one that includes the seduction of the young and vulnerable princess.

In this "energetic" (Kirkus Reviews) re-creation of Anne Boleyn's tragic life — and death — Robin Maxwell offers a pitch-perfect version of a bawdy and exuberant time filled with lust, betrayal, love, and murder. When the young Queen Elizabeth I is entrusted with Anne Boleyn's secret diary, she discovers a great deal about the much-maligned mother she never knew. And on learning the truth about her lascivious and despotic father, Henry VIII, she vows never to relinquish control to any man. But this avowal doesn't prevent Elizabeth from pursuing a torrid love affair with her horsemaster, Robin Dudley — described with near-shocking candor — as too are Anne's graphic trysts with a very persistent and lustful Henry. Blending a historian's attention to accuracy with a novelist's artful rendering, Maxwell weaves compelling descriptions of court life and devastating portraits of actual people into her naughty, page-turning tale. The result is a masterpiece...