Sponsored by "Breaking the Spine"
This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:
'Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery' by Eric Ives will be published October 2nd 2009.
Hardcover: 416 pagesPublisher: Wiley-Blackwell (October 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1405194138
From the Back Cover: "Lady Jane Grey is the queen England rejected. In July 1553, Edward VI, the heir to Henry VIII, died after only a brief reign as a minor. His death left the Tudor dynasty in turmoil. In the aftermath, Jane Grey was proclaimed queen only to be ousted after thirteen days by Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s bastard daughter. Seven months later she had Jane beheaded.
History has portrayed Jane as both a hapless victim of political intrigue and a Protestant martyr, but most of all as an irrelevance, hence the popular but erroneous label, the ‘nine days queen’. Revisiting the sources surrounding Jane Grey’s upbringing, Eric Ives challenges these views, presenting Jane Grey as an accomplished young woman with a fierce personal integrity, and England’s outstanding female scholar. He teases out the complex evidence of the 1553 crisis and dissects the moves and motives of each of the other protagonists: Edward VI himself, feverishly re–writing his will during his dying days; Mary Tudor, the woman who ‘won’ the crown; John Dudley, Jane’s father–in–law, traditionally the villain of the piece; and her father, Henry Grey. As the story moves through the summer of 1553 to Jane’s execution, we see these people as agents in Jane Grey’s unfolding tragedy and her eventual moral triumph. The result is a new and compelling dissection by a master historian and storyteller of one of history’s most shocking injustices."
Because they are similar and I couldn't choose which one, I an cheating a little and mentioning another book that I am also waiting on The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy by Leanda de Lisle (also releases in October)and the author is intending to visit the Lady Jane Grey Reference Journal for a Q&A, so keep that one in your blog roll to follow up with that one when it becomes available.
What are YOU waiting on this fine Wednesday?
.JPG)