Book description
From the pen of legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy comes an
unforgettable true story of
royalty, passion, and innocence lost.
Born into an impoverished branch of the noble Howard family, young
Katherine is plucked from her home to live with her grandmother, the
Duchess of Norfolk. The innocent girl quickly learns that her
grandmother's puritanism is not shared by Katherine's free-spirited
cousins, with whom she lives. Beautiful and impressionable, Katherine
becomes involved in two ill-fated love affairs before her sixteenth
birthday. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, she leaves her grandmother's
home to become a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII. The royal
palaces are exciting to a young girl from the country, and Katherine's
duties there allow her to be near her handsome cousin, Thomas
Culpepper, whom she has loved since childhood.
But when Katherine catches the eye of the aging and unhappily
married king, she is forced to abandon her plans for a life with
Thomas and marry King Henry. Overwhelmed by the change in her
fortunes, bewildered and flattered by the adoration of her husband,
Katherine is dazzled by the royal life. But her bliss is short-lived
as rumors of her wayward past come back to haunt her, and Katherine's
destiny takes another, deadly, turn.
Jean Plaidy, one of the preeminent authors of historical fiction for
most of the twentieth century, is the pen name of the prolific English
author Eleanor Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt. Jean Plaidy's
novels had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide by the time of her
death in 1993.
