The life of Princess May of Teck is one of the great Cinderella stories in history. From a family of impoverished nobility, she was chosen by Queen Victoria as the bride for her eldest grandson, the scandalous Duke of Clarence, heir to the throne, who died mysteriously before their marriage. Despite this setback, she became queen, mother of two kings, grandmother of the current queen, and a lasting symbol of the majesty of the British throne.

Set against a backdrop of glittering privilege, The Assassination ofthe Archduke combines royal history, touching romance, and political murder in a moving portrait of the end of an era. One hundred years after the event, it offers the startling truth behind the Sarajevo assassinations, including Serbian complicity, and examines rumors of conspiracy and official negligence.

As Assistant Private Secretary to four monarchs, 'Tommy' Lascelles had a ringside seat from which to observe the workings of the royal household and Downing Street during the first half of the 20th century. These fascinating diaries begin with Edward VIII's abdication and end with George VI's death and his daughter Elizabeth's Coronation. In between we see George VI at work and play, a portrait more intimate than any other previously published.

Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful and the heir to a vast family fortune. She was also deeply in love with an American suitor when her mother chose instead for her to fulfill her social ambitions and marry an English Duke. Leaving her life in America, she came to England as the Duchess of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home: Blenheim Palace. The ninth Duchess gives unique first-hand insight into life at the very pinnacle of English society in the Edwardian era.

Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is ill-equipped for the undertaking ahead of him. He is to woo Miss Elizabeth Bennet while disguising his purpose—for they are secretly betrothed! The marriage contract, signed 15 years ago, was conceived during the Bennets’ summer interlude at Pemberley.

Lydia was never the most upstanding of the Bennet sisters, but who ever said that moral rectitude was fun? At least she bested her elder sisters and was the first to get married. She never could understand what all the fuss was about after she left Brighton with her gallant. It is a shame, though, that Mr. Wickham turned out to be a disappointing husband in so many aspects, the most notable being his early demise on the battlefields of Waterloo. And so Lydia, still not yet twenty and full of enterprising spirit, is in urgent need of a wealthy replacement.

Young nobleman d’Artagnan has arrived in Paris intent on joining the guardians of King Louis XIII. He befriends the regiment’s most formidable musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and together they unite in their commitment to uphold justice. Soon, a royal indiscretion thrusts them into an audacious escapade of courtly intrigue, thwarted romance, and daring rescue. But it’s the Machiavellian schemes of a powerful enemy and the wicked seductions of an ingenious female spy that will be their greatest challenges.

Published 10 years after Collins’s most popular novel The Woman in White, Man and Wife centres on the confused and inequitable marriage laws of 19th-century Britain, reflecting the author’s own antipathy toward the institution. The plot follows the fortunes of a woman who, committed to marriage with one man, comes to believe that she may have inadvertently married his friend, according to the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland.

France's iconic queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous "Let them eat cake", was alternately revered and reviled during her lifetime. For centuries since, she has been the object of debate, speculation, and the fascination so often accorded illustrious figures in history. Married in mere girlhood, this essentially lighthearted child was thrust onto the royal stage and commanded by circumstance to play a significant role in European history.

The recent death of one of the descendants of Dr. Watson has brought to light his personal papers. These include a number of stories that Dr. Watson suppressed at the time for various reasons. As all involved are long dead, the inheritor has agreed to the publication of a set of eight of the most interesting adventures.

As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents' marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy.

It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here, Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph - and soon the bullet that killed the archduke would set off the Great War that would kill 10 million more.

They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men - or men of great prominence... They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age", designed in 1876 by the visionary architect Philip Webb - the model for Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton.

Love is not the simple thing that novels and poetry speak of. It is by turns subtle and overwhelming. It may slip silently into your heart, or strike like a bolt of lightning.

Queen Victoria and Albert, the Prince Consort, had nine children, who, despite their very different characters, remained a close-knit family. Inevitably, as they married into European royal families, their loyalties were divided and their lives dominated by political controversy. This is not only the story of their lives in terms of world impact but also of personal achievements in their own right, individual contributions to public life in Britain and overseas, and as the children of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.