Good news for all who have been waiting for the new book in his Shardlake series. Pan MacMillan have released information about the new book
Summer, 1546.
King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government of Henry’s successor, eight-year-old Prince Edward. As heretics are hunted across London, and the radical Protestant Anne Askew is burned at the stake, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry’s sixth wife, Matthew Shardlake’s old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr.
Shardlake, still haunted by events aboard the warship Mary Rose the year before, is working on the Cotterstoke Will case, a savage dispute between rival siblings. Then, unexpectedly, he is summoned to Whitehall Palace and asked for help by his old patron, the now beleaguered and desperate Queen.
For Catherine Parr has a secret. She has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King’s attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. But, although the book was kept secret and hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen’s private chamber, it has – inexplicably – vanished. Only one page has been found, clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.
Shardlake’s investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London but leads him and Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of the politics of the royal court; a world he had sworn never to enter again. Loyalty to the Queen will drive him into a swirl of intrigue inside Whitehall Palace, where Catholic enemies and Protestant friends can be equally dangerous, and the political opportunists, who will follow the wind wherever it blows, more dangerous than either.
The theft of Queen Catherine’s book proves to be connected to the terrible death of Anne Askew, while his involvement with the Cotterstoke litigants threatens to bring Shardlake himself to the stake.
King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government of Henry’s successor, eight-year-old Prince Edward. As heretics are hunted across London, and the radical Protestant Anne Askew is burned at the stake, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry’s sixth wife, Matthew Shardlake’s old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr.
Shardlake, still haunted by events aboard the warship Mary Rose the year before, is working on the Cotterstoke Will case, a savage dispute between rival siblings. Then, unexpectedly, he is summoned to Whitehall Palace and asked for help by his old patron, the now beleaguered and desperate Queen.
For Catherine Parr has a secret. She has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King’s attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. But, although the book was kept secret and hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen’s private chamber, it has – inexplicably – vanished. Only one page has been found, clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.
Shardlake’s investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London but leads him and Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of the politics of the royal court; a world he had sworn never to enter again. Loyalty to the Queen will drive him into a swirl of intrigue inside Whitehall Palace, where Catholic enemies and Protestant friends can be equally dangerous, and the political opportunists, who will follow the wind wherever it blows, more dangerous than either.
The theft of Queen Catherine’s book proves to be connected to the terrible death of Anne Askew, while his involvement with the Cotterstoke litigants threatens to bring Shardlake himself to the stake.
The new video for C. J Samson's Lamentation can be seen below -
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Fans of James Ellroy will also welcome the news about his new novel Perfidia.
From James Ellroy, comes the first book in what will become his second ‘L.A. Quartet’. An epic novel, set in Los Angeles over 24 days beginning on 6 December 1941, as L.A. descends into night-time blackouts, war fever and escalating racial tension sparked by the Pearl Harbour bombings.
World War II has raged for two years in Great Britain and Europe. Japan has gone on a rampage in Asia and the Pacific – and America’s entrance into the war is a widely accepted and utterly foregone conclusion. Los Angeles is mainland America’s gateway to the Pacific conflict, home to the largest Japanese community in the United States. Bomber squadrons of the Imperial Japanese Air Corps will attack the U.S. fleet moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, within 24 hours. That catastrophic moment in U.S. history will be preceded by the murders or ritual suicides of a Japanese family in L.A., a scant dozen hours earlier. Massive roundups of suspected Japanese subversives will soon begin; racial hysteria will overtake L.A. The stage has been set for James Ellroy’s largest, most historically dense and factually detailed novel yet.
A crime novel, a war novel and a romance, featuring favourite characters from Ellroy’s previous books, including arch villain Dudley Smith, anti-hero of The Big Nowhere, White Jazz and L.A. Confidential, Perfidia is a modern classic in the making.
The video for the novel Perfidia can be seen below -
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed 'L.A. Quartet': The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. His most recent novel, Blood's a Rover, completes the magisterial 'Underworld USA Trilogy' - the first two volumes of which (American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand) were both Sunday Times bestsellers. Over 1.5 million copies of his books have been sold in the UK alone.
Perfidia will be published by William Heinemann in hardback and ebook on 11 September 2014
