Jane the Quene
About this ebook
All Jane Seymour wants is a husband; but when she catches the eye of a volatile king, she is pulled deep into the Tudor court's realm of plot and intrigue....
England. 1535. Jane Seymour is 27 years old and increasingly desperate to marry and secure her place in the world. When the court visits Wolf Hall, the Seymour ancestral manor, Jane has the perfect opportunity to shine: her diligence, efficiency and newfound poise are sure to finally attract a suitor.
Meanwhile, King Henry VIII is 45 and increasingly desperate for an heir. He changed his country's religion to leave his first wife, a princess of Spain, for Anne Boleyn -- but she too has failed to provide a son. As Henry begins to fear he is cursed, Jane Seymour's honesty and innocence conjure in him the hope of redemption.
Thomas Cromwell, an ambitious clerk whose political prowess keeps the King's changing desires satisfied, sees in Jane Seymour the perfect answer to the unrest threatening England: he engineers the plot that ends with Jane becoming the King's third wife. For Jane, who believes herself virtuous and her actions justified, miscarriages early in her marriage shake her confidence. How can a woman who has committed no wrong bear the guilt of how she unseated her predecessor?
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About the author
Janet Wertman grew up within walking distance of three bookstores and a library on Manhattan's Upper West Side - and she visited all of them regularly. Her grandfather was an antiquarian bookdealer who taught her that there would always be a market for quirky, interesting books. He was the one who persuaded Janet's parents to send her to the French school where she was taught to aspire to long (grammatically correct) sentences as the hallmark of a skillful writer. She lived that lesson until she got to Barnard College. Short sentences were the rule there. She complied. She reached a happy medium when she got to law school - complicated sentences alternating with short ones in a happy mix.
Janet spent fifteen years as a corporate lawyer in New York, she even got to do a little writing on the side (she co-authored The Executive Compensation Answer Book, which was published by Panel Publishers back in 1991). But when her first and second children were born, she decided to change her lifestyle. She and her husband transformed their lives in 1997, moving to Los Angeles and changing careers. Janet became a grantwriter (and will tell anyone who will listen that the grants she's written have resulted in more than $20 million for the amazing non-profits she is proud to represent) and took up writing fiction.
There was never any question about the topic of the fiction: Janet has harbored a passion for the Tudor Kings and Queens since her parents let her stay up late to watch the televised Masterpiece Theatre series (both The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R) when she was *cough* eight years old. One of the highlights of Janet's youth was being allowed to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library on a day when it was closed to the public and examine (though not touch!) books from Queen Elizabeth's personal library and actual letters that the young Princess Elizabeth (technically Lady Elizabeth...) had written.
Janet is deep into writing the first book of her next trilogy, which takes up where the Seymours left off to illustrate the life of Elizabeth I. Janet also runs a blog (www.janetwertman.com) where she posts interesting takes on the Tudors, and she’s part of a group of novelists from Southern California who offer interesting panels and discussions to libraries around the state.
