Boleyn Traitor \u2013 Philippa Gregory
\nOur choice<\/p>\n
RRP: \u00a325 (HarperCollins)<\/p>\n
Check price<\/a><\/p>\n If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, why wouldn\u2019t you? <\/p>\n Lady-in-waiting Jane Boleyn served five queens. She survived her mistress Anne Boleyn, as well as her husband, Anne\u2019s brother, George. She looked away when they came for her sponsor and spymaster, Thomas Cromwell. <\/p>\n History has judged her a snake in the grass, but Gregory \u2013 returning to the Tudors after almost a decade \u2013 imagines an astute woman more sinned against than sinning. An immersive visit to the Court of Henry VIII with its magnificence and machinations, its pageantry and plotting, all the more harrowing if you know how it ends. <\/p>\n And the moral? In a nest of vipers, make like a viper.<\/p>\n The Impossible Fortune \u2013 Richard Osman<\/p>\n RRP: \u00a322 (Viking)<\/p>\n Check price<\/a><\/p>\n Joyce has organised a wedding \u2013 she\u2019s a mother-in-law! Widowed Elizabeth is still grieving, but when the best man confesses that he fears for his life, the Thursday Murder Club reconvenes to crack a code that is a key to unimaginable wealth. <\/p>\n Far from resting on his laurels, Osman just gets better, and his beloved characters are now so thoroughly established, they\u2019ve taken on a life of their own.<\/p>\n Fires Which Burned Brightly\u00a0\u2013 Sebastian Faulks<\/p>\n RRP: \u00a320 (Hutchinson Heinemann)<\/p>\n Check price<\/a><\/p>\n Greetings, pop pickers. If you remember Alan Freeman\u2019s Pick of the Pops, the mincer clamped to the kitchen table, Peter Dominic\u2019s Carafino, first kisses, smoking Ducados and dancing to Je t\u2019aime, Faulks\u2019s essays will waft you back in time. <\/p>\n Don\u2019t let anyone tell you that nostalgia is not what it used to be. The fact is that the past is, as he says, much funnier in retrospect. Not \u2019arf!<\/p>\n Sharp Force \u2013 Patricia Cornwell<\/p>\n RRP: \u00a322 (Sphere)<\/p>\n