Vivian Grey

Spanning the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history—from the 1520s through 1650—Quarrel with the King tells the remarkable saga of one of the greatest families in English history, the Pembrokes, following their glamorous trajectory across three generations of change, ambition, resistance, and war. With vivid color and fascinating detail, acclaimed historian Adam Nicolson recounts the story of a century-long power struggle between England's richest family and the English Crown—a fascinating study of divided loyalties, corruption, rights and privilege, and all the ambiguities involved in the exercise and maintenance of power and status.

Norman England has little to celebrate in the new year of 1140. The country is immersed in a bitter civil war from which no one is immune, including Hugh de Leon, heir to an earldom. His Uncle Guy has arranged his marriage to the spoiled daughter of the newly named Earl of Lincoln. It is a merger that will combine two of the land's largest fortunes -- and give the de Leons unparalleled power. Hugh's heart, however, belongs to the Lady Cristen, and he will do everything he can -- including eloping -- to make her his own.

His plan is simple enough-until the new Earl of Lincoln is murdered, and a friend of Hugh's is accused of the crime. Though he has little time in which to foil his uncle's arrangement, Hugh cannot see an innocent man wrongly hanged. To save his friend and marry the woman he loves, Hugh must work fast to track down a deadly -- and wily -- serpent. But when he grabs it by the tail, can he avoid its poisonous bite?

In the turbulent realm of Norman England, a young nobleman discovers that his identity is the link to an incredible mystery.

Hugh Corbaille has just lost the person he cares for most in the world, his adoptive father, the Sheriff of Lincoln. While Hugh's grief is still raw, he is approached by a visiting knight with an unbelievable tale: Hugh may actually be Hugh de Leon, sole child of the Earl of Wiltshire, mysteriously abducted thirteen years before on the day of his father's murder. Despite his loyalty to the family that raised him and his reluctance to be anyone but their son, Hugh begins to believe he could indeed be the missing heir.

With no memory of his early years, Hugh sets out to find the truth. He soon unearths a web of death and intrigue beginning in the lost days of his childhood when he may have witnessed the stabbing of his birth father.

Tormented by this tragic puzzle, Hugh must turn to the mother he has never known, a court of straligers, and the young woman whose sympathy and healing are his one support, to try to piece together his splintered past and put an end to a reign of danger and deception.

In No Dark Place, award-winning novelist Joan Wolf spins all all-absorbing medieval mystery of violent ambitions, inescapable bonds, and searing dreams of final justice.