Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Kentucky

Virgin Queen

Elizabeth

3f544f66-d54a-4086-9082-50b712679077-1

#hardcover #historical #nonfiction #elizabeth #tudor 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Massachusetts

David Starkey

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Arizona

The Struggle for the Throne

An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual--though, as she maintained, a virgin--Elizabeth I is famed as England's most successful ruler. David Starkey's brilliant new biography concentrates on Elizabeth's formative years--from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558--and shows how the experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs.

From princess and heir-apparent to bastardized and disinherited royal, accused traitor to head of the princely household, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and extreme of condition--and rose above it all to reign during a watershed moment in history. A uniquely absorbing tale of one young woman's turbulent, courageous, and seemingly impossible journey toward the throne, Elizabeth is the exhilarating story of the making of a queen.

7e8c3a04-08e1-412a-ad6d-a23a63a14f0b-1

#paperback #history #biography #nonfiction #elizabeth 

Maryland

Chronicles the young queen's unlikely rise to power as the younger daughter of one of Henry VIII's many wives who was once imprisoned and nearly killed by her own half-sister.

#nonfiction #biography #hardcover #elizabeth 

Georgia

The Forgotten Years

e6268536-9da9-4963-9661-f6da66fc324c-1

South Carolina

Elizabeth 

J. Randy Taraborrelli

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

For more than six decades she has been part of our lives. An American icon, Elizabeth Taylor has been surrounded by fame and notoriety since childhood. Now acclaimed biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli looks past the tabloid version of Elizabeth's life to the person she really is -- and how she evolved from a child star to a woman in her own right. At the heart of this impeccably researched work is the first fully realized portrait of Elizabeth Taylor's family: her canny, controlling mother, who, from the moment she laid eyes on her baby, began plotting her success; and her father, often portrayed as distant, but whose connection with his daughter was far more complex than people knew. As Taraborrelli brings to life the people around Elizabeth and her rise in 1940s Hollywood, he reveals the qualities that made her a star, the associations that put her at the right place at the right time, and the ways in which she was singularly unprepared for life out on her own. While Elizabeth's eight marriages to seven men have been widely publicized, this author examines the psychological and emotional roots of each relationship, including her abusive marriage to Nicky Hilton, her attraction to swashbuckling Mike Todd, and the complex, incendiary Taylor-Burton love affair that continued for decades and never truly died. Finally, Taraborrelli chronicles Elizabeth's most bravura performance of all. Despite the highly public battles with substance abuse and chronic illness, she achieved new success and sustenance in family, friendships, and philanthropy. With never-before-published family photos by Taylor historian Tom Gates, as well as rare family photos, Elizabeth is the story of a woman you thought you knew -- and can now finally begin to understand.

eb9cff12-db52-4aa6-a450-f366bf3da63e-1

From the bestselling author of Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainer comes this fascinating biography of film legend Elizabeth Taylor. She has been written about many times, but never like this . . .

For more than six decades she has been part of our lives. An American icon, Elizabeth Taylor has been surrounded by fame and notoriety since childhood. Now acclaimed biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli looks past the tabloid version of Elizabeth's life to the person she really is-and how she evolved from a child star to a woman in her own right.At the heart of this impeccably researched work is the first fully realized portrait of Elizabeth Taylor's family: her canny, controlling mother, who, from the moment she laid eyes on her baby, began plotting her success; and her father, often portrayed as distant, but whose connection with his daughter was far more complex than people knew.

As Taraborrelli brings to life the people around Elizabeth and her rise in 1940s Hollywood, he reveals the qualities that made her a star, the associations that put her at the right place at the right time, and the ways in which she was singularly unprepared for life out on her own. While Elizabeth's eight marriages to seven men have been widely publicized, this author examines the psychological and emotional roots of each relationship, including her abusive marriage to Nicky Hilton, her attraction to swashbuckling Mike Todd, and the complex, incendiary Taylor-Burton love affair that continued for decades and never truly died. Finally, Taraborrelli chronicles Elizabeth's most bravura performance of all. Despite the highly public battles with substance abuse and chronic illness, she achieved new success and sustenance in family, friendships, and philanthropy.

With never-before-published family photos by Taylor historian Tom Gates, as well as rare family photos, Elizabeth is the story of a woman you thought you knew-and can now finally begin to understand

Donna Fletcher Crow

Louisiana

Days of Loss and Hope

c95ab42d-381e-4c01-9364-2b3a4520077f-1

#biography #hardcover nonfiction #tudor #england #royalty #history

Michigan

An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual -- though, as she maintained, a virgin -- Elizabeth I was to be famed as England's most successful ruler. This brilliant new biography, by concentrating on the formative early years -- from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558 -- shows how her experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs. A uniquely absorbing tale of one young woman's turbulent, courageous and seemingly impossible journey towards the throne, it is the story of the making of a queen. In growing up, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and every extreme of condition. She was three years old at the time of her mother's execution; when she was a young woman, her step-father cut her dress off of her with a knife. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England -- then bastardized and disinherited. At sixteen she was the head of a great princely household. Yet she was also an accused traitor on the verge of execution. Amid all this, she had mastered the most advanced classical curriculum of the day. But it was her lessons in the school of life that mattered more -- and that taught her her humanity. David Starkey re-creates a host of extravagant characters, madcap schemes and tragic plots, while using original documents to point up the importance ofthe rituals of power and life at court. He writes with exceptional clarity about religion and constitutional history. Elizabeth, whose own Protestant faith was personal and sophisticated, was extremely judicious in her handling of Reform, as in her choice of advisors and councilors. Here, too, is a fresh view of the famous rivalry between the daughters of Henry VIII: the pious Catholic Mary and her clever sister. While Elizabeth remained utterly devoted to her father, she was also determined not to lose her opportunity for power -- and not to make the same mistakes as Mary. The skill with which she achieved her goal proved to be a sign that England had reached a watershed moment in its history. Starkey's close attention to detail and vivid storytelling ability combine to produce a narrative of these extraordinary years that reads like a novel. Meticulously researched and enormously compelling, Elizabeth is a masterpiece of biography.

Claire Gervat

Kansas

The Scandalous Life of the Duchess of Kingston

The fascinating and delightfully entertaining story of the eighteenth century beauty and bigamist -- Elizabeth Chudleigh. In 1743 Elizabeth Chudleigh, an exceptional beauty, was appointed maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales. She was soon surrounded by a crowd of admirers. The next year, in a secret ceremony, she married John Hervey, a naval lieutenant and brother of the Earl of Bristol. Hervey immediately returned to sea, and by 1747 their marriage was effectively over. Elizabeth continued to revel in court life, letting herself be known as “Miss Chudleigh.” Causing raised eyebrows at her frivolous behaviour, she became known for the best parties in London. She also became mistress to the Duke of Kingston. In 1768, when Hervey asked for a divorce, Elizabeth refused him, fearing a scandal. All the same she was keen to marry the Duke of Kingston, and in February 1769 she won a case in the ecclesiastical courts, which ruled her a spinster. She and the duke were married by special license soon after. When the duke died in 1773, his nephew, furious that he hadn’t been the main beneficiary of his uncle’s will, leveled a charge of bigamy against Elizabeth. The trial took place in the House of Lords in 1776 and attracted tremendous attention. After five days of a packed House of Lords, with counterfeit tickets on sale due to the demand, Elizabeth was found guilty of bigamy, overturning the ecclesiastical court ruling. But Hervey’s brother, the Earl of Bristol had died, passing his title on to Hervey, so Elizabeth escaped punishment by claiming the benefit of peerage. She spent the rest of her life in Europe buying properties in France and St. Petersburg, where she charmed Catherine the Great and set up a brandy distillery.

bb5663c2-ed1f-4872-a609-ea8412950b43-0

John Guy

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Illinois

The Later Years

COSTA AWARD FINALIST ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR Film rights acquired by Gold Circle Films, the team behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding. A groundbreaking reconsideration of our favorite Tudor queen from the author of Queen of Scots, now a feature film starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie “A fresh, thrilling portrait… Guy’s Elizabeth is deliciously human.” –Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review Elizabeth was crowned queen at twenty-five, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes of a royal marriage were behind her that she began to wield power in her own right. For twenty-five years she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers, who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but to rule. In this magisterial biography, John Guy introduces us to a woman who is refreshingly unfamiliar: at once powerful and vulnerable, willful and afraid. We see her confronting challenges at home and abroad: war against France and Spain, revolt in Ireland, an economic crisis that triggers riots in the streets of London, and a conspiracy to place her cousin Mary Queen of Scots on her throne. For a while she is smitten by a much younger man, but can she allow herself to act on that passion and still keep her throne? For the better part of a decade John Guy mined long-overlooked archives, scouring handwritten letters and court documents to sweep away myths and rumors. This prodigious historical detective work has enabled him to reveal, for the first time, the woman behind the polished veneer: determined, prone to fits of jealous rage, wracked by insecurity, often too anxious to sleep alone. At last we hear her in her own voice expressing her own distinctive and surprisingly resonant concerns. Guy writes like a dream, and this combination of groundbreaking research and propulsive narrative puts him in a class of his own. "Significant, forensic and myth-busting, John Guy inspires total confidence in a narrative which is at once pacey and rich in detail." -- Anna Whitelock, TLS “Most historians focus on the early decades, with Elizabeth’s last years acting as a postscript to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Guy argues that this period is crucial to understanding a more human side of the smart redhead.” – The Economist, Book of the Year

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Biography of Britain's Queen

"To write Elizabeth - published on the occasion of the Queen's seventieth birthday - Sarah Bradford has spent a decade peering behind the Buckingham Palace facade, drawing on private archives and on her unprecedented access to the royal family to produce a uniquely intimate and revealing biography of Elizabeth from her birth to the present day. Bradford has interviewed political figures, courtiers, Palace employees, and friends of the Queen - many of whom have never spoken publicly about her until now - to build up a portrait of Elizabeth as celebrity and symbol of British history, as executive and mother. In the course of her research, Bradford has uncovered extensive new private material about the Windsors, which throws fresh light on the family's many complex relationships and on the major crises in its history, such as the ill-fated affair between Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend and the bitter public breakup of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana." "The British monarchy has undergone great changes since Elizabeth succeeded her father, George VI, in 1952, and the story of Elizabeth and her family is in many ways the story of those changes. Yet Elizabeth is not only a great family saga; it is an in-depth portrayal of a very private woman in her public and private roles. Sarah Bradford answers questions that have long been on royalty-watchers' minds: What is Elizabeth really like? How has she coped with the pressures of being an executive woman and the mother of four children? How rich is she? How does the Palace really operate? Three of her children's marriages have broken down, and there have long been rumors of turbulence in her own marriage. Has Elizabeth failed in her personal life while succeeding in her public role - and has her family's behavior undermined her widely praised performance as Queen, jeopardizing the future of the monarchy itself?" "In this rich and candid biography, Sarah Bradford answers such questions with unrivaled insight and with a wealth of detail about the lives of Elizabeth and the other Windsors."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

07b2654a-5e8a-462f-a292-27499589e721

#queenelizabeth #nonfiction #paperback #ERII #history

Washington

Biography of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II from her birth to the age of seventy, examining her roles as celebrity, symbol of British history, executive, and mother, with information drawn from first-hand observances of the royals and interviews with friends, politicians, courtiers, and Palace employees.

Oregon

New York

New Mexico

Colorado

COSTA AWARD FINALIST ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Film rights acquired by Gold Circle Films, the team behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding "A fresh, thrilling portrait... Guy's Elizabeth is deliciously human." -Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review A groundbreaking reconsideration of our favorite Tudor queen, Elizabeth is an intimate and surprising biography that shows her at the height of her power. Elizabeth was crowned queen at twenty-five, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes of a royal marriage were behind her that she began to wield power in her own right. For twenty-five years she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers, who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but to rule. In this magisterial biography, John Guy introduces us to a woman who is refreshingly unfamiliar: at once powerful and vulnerable, willful and afraid. We see her confronting challenges at home and abroad: war against France and Spain, revolt in Ireland, an economic crisis that triggers riots in the streets of London, and a conspiracy to place her cousin Mary Queen of Scots on her throne. For a while she is smitten by a much younger man, but can she allow herself to act on that passion and still keep her throne? For the better part of a decade John Guy mined long-overlooked archives, scouring handwritten letters and court documents to sweep away myths and rumors. This prodigious historical detective work has enabled him to reveal, for the first time, the woman behind the polished veneer: determined, prone to fits of jealous rage, wracked by insecurity, often too anxious to sleep alone. At last we hear her in her own voice expressing her own distinctive and surprisingly resonant concerns. Guy writes like a dream, and this combination of groundbreaking research and propulsive narrative puts him in a class of his own. "Significant, forensic and myth-busting, John Guy inspires total confidence in a narrative which is at once pacey and rich in detail." -- Anna Whitelock, TLS "Most historians focus on the early decades, with Elizabeth's last years acting as a postscript to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Guy argues that this period is crucial to understanding a more human side of the smart redhead." - The Economist, Book of the Year

California

Florida

Renaissance Prince

A new portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself: not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler



Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her "weak and feeble woman's body" to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton's fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince and used Machiavellian statecraft to secure that position. 
 
A decade since the last major biography, thisElizabethbreaks new ground and depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most treatments claim. For readers of David Starkey and Alison Weir, it will provide a new, complex perspective on Elizabeth's emotional and sexual life.  It's a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England's first recognizably modern head of state.

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