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Simon & Schuster
June 2015
On Sale: June 9, 2015
Featuring: Penelope Devereux; Robert Cecil
560 pages
ISBN: 1476703124
EAN: 9781476703121
Kindle: B00P434DPG
Paperback / e-Book
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Historical
From βa brilliant new player in the court of royal fictionβ (People), comes the mesmerizing story of Lady Penelope Devereuxβthe daring young beauty in the Tudor court, who inspired Sir Philip Sidneyβs famous sonnets even while she plotted against Queen Elizabeth. Penelope Devereux arrives at Queen Elizabethβs court where she and her brother, the Earl of Essex, are drawn into the aging Queenβs favor. Young and naΓ―ve, Penelope, though promised elsewhere, falls in love with Philip Sidney who pours his heartbreak into the now classic sonnet series Astrophil and Stella. But Penelope is soon married off to a man who loathes her. Never fainthearted, she chooses her moment and strikes a deal with her husband: after she gives birth to two sons, she will be free to live as she chooses, with whom she chooses. But she is to discover that the course of true love is never smooth. Meanwhile Robert Cecil, ever loyal to Elizabeth, has his eye on Penelope and her brother. Although it seems the Earl of Essex can do no wrong in the eyes of the Queen, as his influence grows, so his enemies gather. Penelope must draw on all her political savvy to save her brother from his own ballooning ambition and Cecilβs trap, while daring to plan for an event it is treason even to think about. Unfolding over the course of two decades and told from the perspectives of Penelope and her greatest enemy, the devious politician Cecil, Watch the Lady chronicles the last gasps of Elizabethβs reign, and the deadly scramble for power in a dying dynasty.
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