Hilary Mantel

In 1520s England, the Tudor Dynasty is threatening to unravel. King Henry VIII has yet to produce a male heir in twenty-year-marriage to his first wife. However, his pursuit to annul his marriage and court his wife's lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, threatens the stability of all of England and sets forth a chain of events that alters the course of history.

""If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?" England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness...

"In the wake of Hilary Mantel's brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village "scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues." For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In "King Billy Is a Gentleman,"...

"In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture--brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage,...

An award-winning author and reviewer describes her tomboy childhood, challenging Catholic school education, broken family life, marriage, struggle with chronic illness which rendered her unable to have children, and literary career.

Thomas Cromwell is a brutal blacksmith's son who rises from the ashes of personal disaster and deftly picks his way through a court where 'man is wolf to man.' King Henry VIII is obsessed with protecting the Tudor dynasty by securing his succession with a male heir to the throne. Told from Cromwell's perspective, "Wolf Hall" follows the complex machinations and back room dealings of this pragmatic and accomplished power broker who must serve king...