Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the
tragic story of Henry VIII's fifth wife, a nineteen-year-old beauty with
a hidden past, in this fifth novel in the sweeping Six Tudor Queens
series.
"A vivid re-creation of a Tudor tragedy."--Kirkus Reviews
In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his
unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. A prematurely aged and ailing
forty-nine, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a
pretty nineteen-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. Like her cousin Anne
Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England's premier
Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good
Catholic queen. A flirtatious, eager participant in the life of the
royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king's attentions when she
is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family.
Henry quickly becomes besotted and is soon laying siege to Katheryn's
virtue. But as instructed by her relations, she holds out for marriage
and the wedding takes place a mere fortnight after the king's union to
Anna is annulled. Henry tells the world his new bride is a rose without
a thorn, and extols her beauty and her virtue, while Katheryn delights
in the pleasures of being queen and the rich gifts her adoring husband
showers upon her: the gorgeous gowns, the exquisite jewels, and the
darling lap-dogs. She comes to love the ailing, obese king, enduring his
nightly embraces with fortitude and kindness. If she can bear him a son,
her triumph will be complete. But Katheryn has a past of which Henry
knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her**--**even
as she courts danger yet again. What happens next to this naïve and
much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history.
