Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Crown and The Chalice, is a writer and magazine editor who has worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good Housekeeping. She is currently the executive editor of Du Jour magazine. A native of the Midwest, she lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Visit her website at NancyBilyeau.com.
The Tapestry: A Novel
eBook
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ISBN-13:
9781476756394
- Publisher: Touchstone
- Publication date: 03/24/2015
- Series: Joanna Stafford Series
- Sold by: SIMON & SCHUSTER
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 400
- Sales rank: 191,008
- File size: 4 MB
Available on NOOK devices and apps
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The next page-turner in the award-winning Joanna Stafford series takes place in the heart of the Tudor court, as the gutsy former novice risks everything to defy the most powerful men of her era.
After her priory in Dartford is closed—collateral damage in tyrannical King Henry VIII’s quest to overthrow the Catholic Church—Joanna resolves to live a quiet and honorable life weaving tapestries, shunning dangerous quests and conspiracies. Until she is summoned to Whitehall Palace, where her tapestry weaving has drawn the King’s attention.
Joanna is uncomfortable serving the King whom she has twice attempted to overthrow—unbeknownst to him. She fears for her life in a court bursting with hidden agendas and a casual disregard for the virtues she holds dear. And her suspicions are confirmed when an assassin attempts to kill her moments after arriving at Whitehall.
Struggling to stay ahead of her most formidable enemy yet, an unknown one, she becomes entangled in dangerous court politics. Her dear friend Catherine Howard is rumored to be one of the King’s mistresses. Joanna is determined to protect young, beautiful, naïve Catherine from becoming the King’s next wife and possibly, victim.
Set in a world of royal banquets and feasts, tournament jousts, ship voyages, and Tower Hill executions, this thrilling tale finds Joanna in her most dangerous situation yet, as she attempts to decide the life she wants to live: nun or wife, spy or subject, rebel or courtier. Joanna must finally choose her fate.
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"A master of atmosphere, Nancy Bilyeau imbues her novel with the sense of dread and oppression lurking behind the royal glamour; in her descriptions and characterizations...Bilyeau breathes life into history."—Laura Andersen, author of The Boleyn King
"In The Tapestry, Nancy Bilyeau brilliantly captures both the white-hot religious passions and the brutal politics of Tudor England. It is a rare book that does both so well." –Sam Thomas, author of The Midwife’s Tale
"Bilyeau sends her plucky former novice back into the intrigue-laden court of Henry VIII."
In this third series installment (The Crown; The Chalice), former Dominican novice Joanna Stafford is called to King Henry VIII's court owing to her tapestry-weaving skills. When she arrives at court, however, Joanna discovers that her weaving does not seem to be foremost on everyone's mind: seemingly everywhere she turns, someone is trying to kill her. Not even those sworn to protect her know whether it's the king who is after her blood. VERDICT The problem with this historical is that there's just too much: too much travel, too much description, too many people willing to talk to someone who is, in fact, a nobody in a 16th-century royal court. That doesn't make it less entertaining, just a bit of a quagmire to muddle through, and a novel that also leaves the reader thinking: "Why is everyone willing to talk to this person?" Still, fans of this period of English history and readers who enjoyed the first two books might consider this title.—Audrey Jones, Washington, DC
The adventures of Tudor-era ex-nun Joanna Stafford continue as she battles a lethal conspiracy.When we last left Joanna (The Chalice, 2013, etc.), a fictional daughter of the disgraced Stafford clan, she had retreated to Dartford, site of her former home, the Dominican priory dismantled by King Henry VIII's minister Cromwell, along with the rest of England's monasteries. There, she hopes to live in quiet retirement—no more schemes like the plot to kill King Henry in which she was once unwittingly embroiled. Her only concern is that she was prevented from marrying her beloved Edmund, an ex-friar, at the last minute when Geoffrey, the Dartford constable (another admirer) brought up an inconvenient royal edict that those who once took holy vows had to remain celibate. As she pursues her new vocation, tapestry weaving, Joanna is dismayed to receive a royal summons—King Henry needs her textile expertise at the palace of Whitehall. Immediately upon arrival, Joanna narrowly escapes kidnapping by a gruff man disguised as a page. From then on, no end of Tudor machinations and plots enmeshes her once again. Powerful relatives are pressuring teenage Catherine Howard to become the king's mistress. Joanna witnesses Cromwell weeping just before he is to be elevated to an earldom. Her friend Thomas Culpepper seems to be involved with two other courtiers in a sinister "covenant" to bring down Cromwell using witchcraft. Joanna's few allies at court include the portraitist Hans Holbein. When Joanna's life is once again threatened, Geoffrey returns and removes her to Europe, where, while supposedly acquiring tapestries for the king's collection, she will endeavor to solve several mysteries: Edmund's disappearance, the nature of the necromancy behind the Cromwell covenant, and whether or not she will finally decide between Geoffrey and Edmund. Despite much explanatory back story, this book does not really stand alone. It should be read in sequence with its two predecessors—not all that unappealing a chore Illuminated by Bilyeau's vivid prose, minor players of Tudor England emerge from the shadows.