Written by Jean Plaidy
Format: MP3
Unabridged The Royal Road to Fotheringhay (Stuart Saga, #1) (Mary Stuart #1) The haunting story of the beautiful--and tragic--Mary, Queen of Scots, as only legendary novelist Jean Plaidy could write it
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland at the tender age of six days old. Her French-born mother, the Queen Regent, knew immediately that the infant queen would be a vulnerable pawn in the power struggle between Scotland's clans and nobles. So Mary was sent away from the land of her birth and raised in the sophisticated and glittering court of France. Unusually tall and slim, a writer of music and poetry, Mary was celebrated throughout Europe for her beauty and intellect. Married in her teens to the Dauphin Francois, she would become not only Queen of Scotland but Queen of France as well. But Mary's happiness was short-lived. Her husband, always sickly, died after only two years on the throne, and there was no place for Mary in the court of the new king. At the age of twenty, she returned to Scotland, a place she barely knew.
Once home, the Queen of Scots discovered she was a stranger in her own country. She spoke only French and was a devout Catholic in a land of stern Presbyterians. Her nation was controlled by a quarrelsome group of lords, including her illegitimate half brother, the Earl of Moray, and by John Knox, a fire-and-brimstone Calvinist preacher, who denounced the young queen as a Papist and a whore. Mary eventually remarried, hoping to find a loving ally in the Scottish Lord Darnley. But Darnley proved violent and untrustworthy. When he died mysteriously, suspicion fell on Mary. In haste, she married Lord Bothwell, the prime suspect in her husband's murder, a move that outraged all of Scotland. When her nobles rose against her, the disgraced Queen of Scots fled to England, hoping to be taken in by her cousin Elizabeth I. But Mary's flight from Scotland led not to safety, but to Fotheringhay Castle... The Captive Queen of Scots (Stuart Saga, #2) (Mary Stuart #2) “Burn the murderess!” So begins Jean Plaidy’s The Captive Queen of Scots, the epic tale of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, cousin to Queen Elizabeth of England. After her husband, Lord Darnley, is murdered, suspicion falls on Mary and her lover, the Earl of Bothwell. A Catholic in a land of stern Protestants, Mary finds herself in the middle of a revolt, as her bloodthirsty subjects call for her arrest and execution. In disgrace, she flees her Scottish persecutors for England, where she appeals to Queen Elizabeth for mercy, but to no avail. Throughout Mary’s long years as the Queen’s prisoner, she conceives many bold plans for revenge and escaping to freedom—but the gallows of Fotheringhay Castle loom . . . Set against royal pageantry, religious strife, and bloody uprising—and filled with conspiracies, passion, heartbreak, and fascinating historical detail—The Captive Queen of Scots is an unforgettable, page-turning tale of the intense rivalry between two powerful women of noble blood. The Murder in the Tower (Stuart Saga #3)
The dashing Robert Carr is a well-known favourite of King James I and he rises quickly through the ranks. But when he is married to the cunning and beautiful child-bride, Frances Howard, a very dangerous liaison changes everything. Frances emerges as a headstrong force of nature - determined to have her way, no matter what the cost. Her attempts to rid herself of an unwanted husband, and later to ensnare a lukewarm lover, lead her deep into the world of spell-makers and treachery. This is a woman to underestimate at great peril. But when Robert finds himself ensnared in one of Frances's plots he finally learns what she is truly capable of