1601. Queen Elizabeth I is dying. With no heir for the kingdom, potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen's spymasters fear that James' claim to be a Protestant are untrue. If he secretly shares his family's Catholicism, then forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. It falls to...

In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William's star rises, Richard's onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty. So when a priceless manuscript goes missing,...

In 1599 England, twelve-year-old lying, thieving Will Sparrow runs away, meets many colorful characters on the road, and then reluctantly joins a traveling "oddities" exhibit, where he learns to see beyond appearances.

A dazzling feat of romantic fiction that blends rich historical detail with sumptuous romance to sweep us into glittering, intrigue-riddled Elizabethan England, from New York Times bestselling author Virginia Henley Young Bess Hardwick knew that the only way to escape a commoner's life was to serve in a noble family and marry well. So the headstrong beauty set out for London and the Tudor court, the arena for the richest, most ambitious men, none...

Jack and Annie travel in their magic tree house to Elizabethan London, where they become actors in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and try to rescue a tame bear.

When the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, learns Ursula is to visit her relatives in Devon, he asks her to find out what has happened to two of his local agents, who have been strangely silent. On arrival in Devon, Ursula learns both men have met with mysterious, and fatal, accidents.

On May 30, 1593, London's most popular playwright was stabbed to death. The royal coroner ruled that Christopher Marlowe was killed in self-defense, but historians have long suspected otherwise, given his role as an "intelligencer" in the queen's secret service. In sixteenth-century London, Marlowe embarks on his final intelligence assignment, hoping to find his missing muse, as well as the culprits behind a high-stakes smuggling scheme. In present-day...

Autumn has fallen on Wiltshire, but as the air grows crisp and the trees turn a resplendent gold, a sinister presence arrives in the form of a horrifying murder. Bartholomew Reade, a player in a traveling troupe, has been found stabbed, sprawled on a low mound outside the village, a reed pen jabbed into his throat. On the night of the murder, a bleeding woman collapses at the doorstep of herbalist Bess Ellyott desperately seeking help. Could she have...

"March, 1581. Queen Elizabeth is once again being urged to consider marriage to the Duke of Alenc̦on, a French Catholic twenty years her junior. The prospect of the match is causing unrest throughout the kingdom. Ursula however has more immediate matters to worry about when her 9-year-old son is snatched away while out riding. If she is ever to see him again, Ursula must undertake an impossibly difficult and dangerous mission - and commit an act...