In this ambitious and groundbreaking book, Philippa Gregory tells the story of England over 900 years, for the very first time placing women --- some 50 percent of the population --- center stage. Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records, newspapers and journals to find highwaywomen and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The “normal women” you will meet in these pages went to war, plowed the fields, campaigned, wrote and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, and built ships, corn mills and houses. They committed crimes or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things and rioted. A lot.

It is 1685, and England is on the brink of a renewed civil war. Ned Ferryman cannot persuade his sister, Alinor, that he is right to return from America with his Pokanoket servant, Rowan, to join the rebel army. Instead, Alinor has been coaxed by the manipulative Livia to save the queen from the coming siege. The rewards are life-changing: the family could return to their beloved Tidelands, and Alinor could rule where she was once lower than a servant. Alinor’s son, Rob, is determined to stay clear of the war, but when he and his nephew set out to free Ned from execution for treason and Rowan from a convict deportation to Barbados, they find themselves enmeshed in the creation of an imposter Prince of Wales --- a surrogate baby to the queen.

Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted 21 years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favour of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse's poor owner Alinor has the one thing his money cannot buy --- his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice in deepest mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son, Rob, has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Alinor is convinced --- without doubt --- that her son is alive and the widow is an imposter.

On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning.

Seventeen-year-old Jane Grey was queen of England for nine days. Her father and his allies crowned her instead of the dead king’s half-sister Mary Tudor, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her throne, and locked Jane in the Tower of London. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block, where Jane transformed her father’s greedy power-grab into tragic martyrdom. Meanwhile, Jane’s sister, Katherine, faces imprisonment in the Tower when her pregnancy betrays her secret marriage. What will happen when the youngest Grey sister, Mary --- the last Tudor --- defies her ruthless and unforgiving cousin Queen Elizabeth?

When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined --- with Margaret’s younger sister, Mary --- to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland and France. United by family loyalties and affections, they find themselves set against each other. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss and passion, the three queens find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king.

Kateryn Parr, a 30-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives --- King Henry VIII --- commands her to marry him. Despite being a leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English, Kateryn cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry’s dangerous gaze turns on her. The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy. The punishment is death by fire, and the king’s name is on the warrant.

Kateryn Parr, a 30-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives --- King Henry VIII --- commands her to marry him. Despite being a leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English, Kateryn cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry’s dangerous gaze turns on her. The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy. The punishment is death by fire, and the king’s name is on the warrant.

Margaret Pole is married off to a Lancaster supporter entrusted with the governorship of Wales. When Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, arrives with his bride Katherine of Aragon, Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend by hiding her own royal connections. Following Arthur’s death, Katherine marries his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret is summoned to court as the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine, and must choose between the king and queen, between her faith or the theology of her new masters.

Margaret Pole is married off to a Lancaster supporter entrusted with the governorship of Wales. When Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, arrives with his bride Katherine of Aragon, Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend by hiding her own royal connections. Following Arthur’s death, Katherine marries his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret is summoned to court as the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine, and must choose between the king and queen, between her faith or the theology of her new masters.

Henry Tudor must marry the princess of the enemy house, Elizabeth of York, to unify a country divided by war for nearly two decades. But his bride is still in love with his slain enemy, Richard III --- and her mother and half of England dream of a missing heir, sent into the unknown by the White Queen. When a young man who would be king invades England, Elizabeth has to choose between the new husband she is coming to love and the boy who claims to be her beloved lost brother.

THE KINGMAKER'S DAUGHTER is the gripping story of the daughters of the man known as the “Kingmaker,” Richard, Earl of Warwick: the most powerful magnate in 15th-century England. Without a son and heir, he uses his two daughters as pawns in the political games, and they grow up to be influential players in their own right.

Despite religious vows and despite themselves, love grows between Luca and Isolde as they travel across Europe with their faithful companions, Freize and Ishraq. The four young people encounter werewolves, alchemists, witches and death-dancers as they head toward a real-life historical figure who holds the boundaries of Christendom and the secrets of the Order of the Dragon.

Philippa Gregory weaves witchcraft, passion and adventure into the story of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, a woman who navigated a treacherous path through the battle lines in the War of the Roses. 

Philippa Gregory and her fellow historians describe the extraordinary lives of the heroines of her Cousins’ War books: Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford; Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV; and Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.