Showing results by author "J. P. Reedman" in All Categories

I, RICHARD PLANTAGENET, PART ONE : TANT LE DESIREE (I have desired it so much.) 1471 : THE BATTLE OF BARNET. He is eighteen.It is his first battle. He is wounded…he is Richard of Gloucester, the King’s youngest brother. With the Kingmaker slain, Richard and his brother Edward IV go on to ultimate victory at Tewkesbury. The Old King Henry dies in ‘mysterious circumstances’ in the Tower and York’s claim is secure…Richard wants to marry Anne Neville, the Kingmaker’s daughter, but his brother George stands in his way and hides her in a London tavern… Not all the feuds are on the...

I RICHARD PLANTAGENET: PART TWO LOYAULTE ME LIE Sequel to Tante le Desiree but also a stand-alone book in its own right. 1483. King Edward IV is dead. The Woodvilles have the Great Seal—and the treasury. In the north Richard Duke of Gloucester receives word of his brother’s unexpected death from Lord Hastings, who advises him to get to London and take possession of the new young King. Riding into Northampton, Anthony Woodville, guardian of Edward V, is implicated in a plot to ambush Richard upon the road. He is arrested and Edward V taken into care by Gloucester and the flamboyant and ...

Eleanor of Provence, bright, beautiful, intelligent--married as a young girl to the much older Henry III, King of England. A marriage surprisingly happy, with the king pouring wealth upon his young wife's relatives...incurring the wrath of the Barons. Eleanor, devoted mother, who fought the will of the monks to stay in a monastery and nurse her sick son, the future Edward I. Eleanor, caught in court intrigue, with the powerful, disturbing Baron, Simon de Montfort, looming at every turn--friend or foe? Or what else? Eleanor, attacked while on a barge passing under London Bridge, as the ...

A MAN WHO WOULD BE KING : The Duke of Buckingham and Richard III November 2 1483. As Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham stands on the scaffold of Salisbury Market Square, accused of high treason, he reflects on his life during the turbulent era of the Wars of the Roses. After the death of his grandfather, the old Duke, Henry (known as Harry) is sent to the court of the new King Edward IV and placed into the household of his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Harry, coming from a rich and noble line, is considered a a “prize catch” for the Woodvilles, and soon he is forced, aged ten, to marry ...

In 15th century England, there are two cousins, both the daughters of dukes, both widowed young, both the mother of sons called Henry. Both are named Margaret Beaufort. One Margaret’s son will be a future King. The other one’s son will be an infamous rebel. The ‘other Margaret Beaufort’ is the daughter of Edmund, Duke of Somerset. Proud and temperamental, Edmund’s bitterest enemy is Richard, Duke of York. Rumours swirl about Edmund—Is he to blame for losing many English territories in France? Is he the true father of Queen Margaret’s baby son, Edward of Westminster? Tensions ...

Rosamund Clifford, one of the most famous royal mistresses of all time—concubine to Henry II, the first Plantagenet King. A young maiden ruled by a grasping father who will stop at nothing to promote his own cause with the King...even using his daughter's beautiful face and enticing body to gain high favour. A fearful girl taken by a mysterious messenger from Godstow nunnery to a Tower surrounded by a grotesque topiary labyrinth, where she must wait for the arrival of the master of the maze—not the Minotaur of ancient Greek myth but the bull-like Plantagenet King Henry. Drawn like a ...

Before there was a King called Richard III, there was a boy, Richard of the House of York, youngest living child of his large, royal-blooded family. A small, thin, nervous boy who witnesses the terror of the sack of Ludlow and is taken prisoner in its aftermath, along with his mother Cecily and two of his siblings. A child of eight sent for safety to a strange foreign land when his father is killed in battle and one of his brothers murdered, their heads spiked above the gates of York by the Lancastrian victors. A young boy raised to knighthood and a Dukedom by his eldest brother, the ...

Daughter of a Scottish king and an Anglo-Saxon princess, Edith is sent to her Aunt Cristina, the Abbess of Romsey for her education. Cristina is harsh and unkind and tries to force Edith to wear a nun's veil, first as a disguise and then permanently, but Edith is enraged and tramples it on the ground. She begs her parents to move her from Romsey to the grand Abbey of Wilton and for a while Edith's life is calm and fulfilling--but then the suitors begin to come. Most fearsome of all is the King, William Rufus, with his fierce mismatched eyes, florid face...and evil reputation. More ...

A short look at mythology and folklore connected with Stonehenge, the world's most famous stone circle, and with other megalithic monuments. Who is the sinister 'Bowed One' and what relationship do the bones of a silver-handed saint have to an Irish deity of healing, mist and dogs? Did a Man in the Moon stare down at Stonehenge, and a female sun ride across the skies in a chariot with spoked wheels...or was it the reverse? Howling blue hags with single eyes bleary as the setting Midwinter Solstice sun; dancing stones drinking at the river; petrified women, wedding guests and hurlers; ...

‘Small, very talkative, ready enough to do evil, shrewd and jocular, extremely cruel and daring.’ Orderic Vitalis on Mabel de Belleme. Mabel is the daughter of William de Belleme, known as Talvas, the Hard Shield, for his fierceness in battle…and at home. When William murders Mabel’s mother, he is expelled from his castle into exile—but Mabel follows him loyally, despite what he has done. As the Belleme fortunes gradually return, Mabel is married to an upstanding young lord, Roger de Montgomery, a close friend of the new Duke of Normandy—William, who will one day become the ...

A Vous Me Lie—I am Bound to You. (An early motto found in a book of Richard of Gloucester, later King Richard III.) Young Richard of Gloucester has returned to his brother King Edward’s court after training in the household of the Earl of Warwick. Quickly the young man finds himself caught up in court intrigues: the famous Smithfield Joust, the Woodvilles’ theft of Thomas Cook’s tapestries, the killing of the Earl of Desmond in dubious circumstances. He also is befriended by the older John Howard, and experiences his first tastes of love –which results in the births of his two ...

The Tudor Era has dawned. Richard III lies in a shallow grave at Greyfriars in Leicester and Henry Tudor sits upon an uneasy throne. Richard's illegitimate daughter, Katherine Plantagenet, wife of one year to William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, struggles to find her path in the strange new world of Tudor England. Only fifteen years old, she fears her husband will put her aside due to her relationship to the deposed King. Frightened and alone, she recalls the events of her younger years, when Richard, Duke of Gloucester took her and her half-brother John to be raised at Sheriff Hutton ...

1964. Workmen digging on a bombsite in London uncover a hidden vault containing a lead coffin. The coffin is almost reburied in a mass grave in a local churchyard, but an old retired policeman, examining the sarcophagus in the police station where the find has been taken, notices a plaque attached to the leaden lid. What he reads, stuns him--this is not an unknown medieval nun or noblewoman. The coffin's occupant is a child--a Princess, Anne Mowbray, wife of Richard of Shrewsbury, one of the infamous Princes in the Tower, who disappeared in 1483... 1470's. Elizabeth is the Dowager Duchess ...

Princess. Marriage Prize. Prisoner. Eleanor of Brittany is sent to live in the household of her esteemed grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and brought up expecting to be the bride of a powerful prince. But when the marriage proposed for her as part of Richard Lionheart's ransom falls through and King Richard dies a few years later at Chalus, she is returned to her mother and her beloved younger brother Arthur in Brittany. John now sits on the throne of England, something Eleanor and Arthur both resent, for they are the children of his elder brother, Geoffrey, and many men say their claim ...

Red-haired, wild and full of strong opinions, Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard thinks her marriage to Viscount Aimery is the highest honour to which she can aspire. But then she meets his liege lord, William, Duke of Aquitaine. William the Troubadour, a former Crusader, whose court is full of music, merriment and bawdiness. Everything Dangereuse craves. Dangereuse and William embark on a secret affair--and soon he abducts her from her husband's castle and carries her off to Poitiers, where he installs her in the Maubergeon, a tower built especially for her within his palace. With William's ...

Spirited away to France after the death of her father, the Earl of Salisbury, young Ela is soon found by a wandering minstrel and taken to the court of Richard Lionheart. Aged nine, she is betrothed to the King's illegitimate half-brother, William Longsword, before being sent for education in the household of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Some years later, Ela and William form a harmonious bond, despite their arranged marriage, and have many children, but their lives are always threatened by uncertainty. King John now rules, and William is his most loyal brother--and his enforcer. When the King ...

Richard Duke of York lies dead outside the walls of Sandal Castle, lured to his death by false talk of a Christmas truce. His second son Edmund, aged just seventeen, is murdered by Butcher Clifford, his blood staining the cobbles of Wakefield bridge outside the chapel where he had vainly sought sanctuary. The House of York has fallen...but not for long. The Lancastrian army of Margaret of Anjou has reaped the whirlwind with the treacherous slaughter at Wakefield. Edward of March, Duke Richard's heir, is coming after them, tall, handsome, young and a fearsome warrior...and he wants vengeance...

Eleanor Talbot, newly widowed after the Battle of Blore Heath, meets Edward, Earl of March. It is a time of trials when the Lancastrians and Yorkists fight for supremacy...and the throne of England. The Talbots are staunch Lancastrians; Edward is the Son of York. The Battles of Mortimer's Cross and the bloodbath of Towton lead to Edward taking the crown. A secret marriage is hatched between the young King and Eleanor, but the “secret queen” is never announced to the Council. King Edward’s womanising reaches new heights as, within a short time, his eye falls on another widowed beauty, ...

Isabella Lawrence is a photographer in modern day London. Her specialty is photographing old buildings prior to their restoration. One night she goes on a shoot in a derelict theatre. As she takes her shots in the auditorium, she suddenly realises someone else, someone unknown, is in the building with her. Panicking, she runs out onto the stage--and the rotted boards crumble beneath her feet, hurling her down, down, down... into the past into the body of of a jobbing Victorian actress called Arabella Lorne. Arabella is asked to marry the mysterious brooding landowner, Sir Augustus Stannion-...

Robin of Locksley, Lord of the Hood, continues his mission to help the people of Sherwood against the oppression of the Sheriff of Nottingham, even though his wife Marian, wounded in body and soul, has left him for the safety of Kirklees Priory. Mourning her loss, Robin has become hard and embittered—the Summer Lord has turned into a Winter King. At the Merlin Stone, deep in Sherwood, San Tan the guardian fire speaks of one who is coming, who will shake the foundations of the young outlaw’s life. Change arrives in the form of Clarimonde, Queen of the Shepherdesses, a mysterious girl who...