Anna of Kleve: the princess in the portrait (SIx Tudor queens; #4) / Alison Weir
Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 by Library Director
The King is in love with Anna’s portrait, but she has none of the accomplishments he seeks in a new bride. She prays she will please Henry, for the balance of power in Europe rests on this marriage alliance. But Anna’s past is never far from her thoughts, and the rumors rife at court could be her downfall. Everyone knows the King won’t stand for a problem queen.
When an old acquaintance reaches out to Stone Barrington requesting assistance, the job seems easy enough. She needs an expert in an esoteric field, someone with both the knowledge and careful dexterity to solve a puzzle. But the solution to one small problem blows the lid open on a bigger scandal going back decades, and involving numerous prominent New Yorkers who would prefer the past stay buried.
Caroline is the young wife of Jacob, who together live on a farm raising their daughter just outside of Gettysburg. When Jacob joins the Northern army, no one anticipates he will not return. Then Caroline gets word that her husband is wounded, and she must find her way alone to Washington City and search among the thousands of casualties to find him.
Chicago celebrity and pitchman Charles James is supposed to be dead. Everyone believes he was killed in a fiery plane crash, a flight he narrowly missed. But thanks to that remarkable twist of fate, he’s very much alive and ready for a second chance at life and love. Escaping death has brought Charles some clarity: the money, the fame, the expensive cars; none of it brought him true joy or peace.
No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. For while they summer on their island in Maine, anchored as they are to the way things have always been, the winds of change are beginning to stir.
Nothing bad can happen at the Ritz; inside its gilded walls every woman looks beautiful, every man appears witty. Favored guests like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor walk through its famous doors to be welcomed and pampered by Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the hotel’s director. The Auzellos are the mistress and master of the Ritz, allowing the glamour and glitz to take their minds off their troubled marriage, and off the secrets that they keep from their guests – and each other.
On the day before her Amish parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary, nineteen-year-old Sylvia Miller stumbles across the key to the old brass tinderbox her father keeps in his Lancaster County watch repair shop. Piqued by curiosity, Sylvia unlocks the cherished heirloom, not realizing that what she is about to discover will splinter apart her happy life.