Innocent Traitor

Alison Weir, a historian best known for her nonfiction about the Tudors, brings her research to fiction in this novel about Lady Jane Grey. Jane is a teenager whose parents treat her as a piece in a high-stakes family strategy. She is born in the years between Anne Boleyn's execution and the death of her great-uncle, Henry VIII, and grows up at a court where others decide her fate.

When the young King Edward VI dies, a fight for power erupts, fueled by cutthroat politics and fierce religious conflict that threaten the Tudor dynasty itself. Jane is candid, sharp-minded and mature beyond her years. She would rather spend her time with books and religious study than with ambition, yet she is pressed to accept the crown, which sets off a chain of plotting, betrayal and loss.

The novel surrounds her with a large cast: her calculating father and unsparing mother, a nanny she is fond of, the kind Queen Katherine Parr, Jane's ambitious cousins, the Catholic Mary, who will do anything to claim the throne, and the Protestant Elizabeth, who will later become queen. Scenes move through royal drawing rooms and bedchambers, following the maneuvering around Jane from the day she is born. The book portrays a devout young woman caught in forces far beyond her control. This edition also includes an excerpt from Weir's Mary Boleyn.