AustLit

'I do not remember when I discovered how my mother died, it seems to be something I always knew, a horror I absorbed through my skin.

'Determined, passionate, privileged and headstrong, Elizabeth was born into a world where she felt she didn't belong and had to fight to survive.

'Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed by her father Henry VIII. From that moment on, Elizabeth competed with her two half-siblings for love and for Britain's throne. In the gilded corridors of the royal palace, enemies she couldn't see - as well as those bound to her by blood - plotted to destroy her.

'How do you find the courage to become queen even though you are just a girl?' (Publisher's blurb)

'The Queen of Scots is dead and they say I killed her. They lie!

'Just a girl to those around her, Elizabeth is now the Queen of England. She has outsmarted her enemies and risen above a lifetime of hurt and betrayal – a mother executed by her father, a beloved brother who died too young and an enemy sister whose death made her queen.

'Not knowing whom she can trust, Elizabeth is surrounded by men who give her compliments and advice but may be hiding daggers and poison behind their backs. Elizabeth must use her head and ignore her heart to be the queen her people need. But what if that leads to doing the one thing she swore she would never do: betray a fellow queen, her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A terrible dread took hold in my belly. The only bed left to me was my death bed and I was not ready for that – not yet.

'Elizabeth is a survivor. The unwanted daughter of an executed queen, she endured the perils of her childhood to take the throne as Queen of England. Just a girl at coronation, Elizabeth has now ruled for over four decades, withstanding political upheavals, war and plots against her life.

'But as her life draws to an end, she weighs up all that she has relinquished – love, marriage, family of any kind – for power. She was not just a queen, but a flesh-and-blood woman. Will her last moments be ones of regret?

'Here is the final chapter in the life of a woman who grasped her destiny with both hands and made herself one of the greats of history.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.