Showing results by author "Nancy Bilyeau" in All Categories

In the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, novice Joanna Stafford is summoned back to London to face King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell... who have made it their mission to expurge the Catholic faith from England.

In this debut historical thriller, an aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father’s life and preserve all she holds dear. When novitiate nun Joanna Stafford learns her rebel cousin is condemned by King Henry VIII to be burned at the stake, she makes the decision to break the sacred rule of enclosure and flee her Dominican order in Dartford to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, Sir Richard Stafford, is sent to the Tower of London.

In the next novel from Nancy Bilyeau after her acclaimed debut The Crown, novitiate Joanna Stafford plunges into an even more dangerous conspiracy as she comes up against some of the most powerful men of her era. In 1538, England is in the midst of bloody power struggles between crown and cross that threaten to tear the country apart. Joanna Stafford has seen what lies inside the king’s torture rooms and risks imprisonment again when she is caught up in a shadowy international plot targeting the king.

The year is 1911 when 20-year-old heiress Peggy Batternberg is invited to spend the summer in America’s Playground. The invitation to Coney Island is unwelcome. Despite hailing from one of America’s richest families, Peggy would much rather spend the summer working at the Moonrise Bookstore than keeping up appearances with New York City socialites and her snobbish, controlling family. But hidden behind her family's pomposity lurks a web of deceit, betrayal, and deadly secrets.

In 18th-century London, porcelain is the most seductive of commodities; fortunes are made and lost upon it. Kings do battle with knights and knaves for possession of the finest pieces and the secrets of their manufacture. For Genevieve Planché, an English-born descendant of Huguenot refugees, porcelain holds far less allure; she wants to be an artist, a painter of international repute, but nobody takes the idea of a female artist seriously in London. If only she could reach Venice.

Zia De Luca’s life is about to be shattered. Having lost her husband to the Great War, she lives with her in-laws in Little Italy and works at the public library. But when a quiet poetry-lover is murdered outside the library, the police investigation focuses on Zia.

As Genevieve Sturbridge struggles to keep her silk design business afloat, she must face the fact that London in 1764 is very much a man’s world. Men control the arts and sciences, men control politics and law. And men definitely control women. A Huguenot living in Spitalfields, Genevieve one day receives a surprise invitation from an important artist. She soon learns that for the portrait painters ruling over the wealthy in London society, fame and fortune are there for the taking. But such high stakes spur rivalries that darken to sabotage and blackmail—and even murder.