Hilary Mantel

""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...

Anxious about the consequences of dying without a male heir, Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn; the power struggle between the Church and the Crown is mediated by Thomas Cromwell, who manages to get the king what he wants.

"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,"...

A suspenseful romance set during the French Revolution. While men, women, and children fall under the merciless blade of the guillotine, the daring Scarlet Pimpernel bravely rescues aristocrats from the jaws of death. Meanwhile, Sir Percy Blakeney and his estranged wife Marguerite St. Just are caught up in a nefarious scheme to uncover the Scarlet Pimpernel's true identity.

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.

A social worker is baffled by a mother-daughter team drowning in festering rubbish, unhealthy smells in their dilapidated home, and too many secrets that keep them sick.

A taut and terrifying trip into a distorting mirror--a novel as tense, immediate, and chilling as the world it depicts.

"She looked up and smiled. She had a face of feral sweetness, its color yellow; her eyes were long and dark, her mouth a taut bow, her nostrils upturned as if she were scenting the wind." In "How Shall I Know You?" a melancholic and ailing writer reluctantly travels east of London to give a lecture before a literary society. Mr. Simister, the organization's secretary, lures the world-weary novelist turned biographer with promises of a modest stipend...

Carmel McBain is the only child of working-class Irish-Catholic parents. Her mother aspires to something more for her than what life in their depressed mill town has to offer. She is ambitious for her daughter, determined that she slip through England's rigid social barriers. And so, early on, she pushes Carmel, first to gain a scholarship to the local convent school, then to sit the exams for a place at London University. And Carmel does not disappoint....