title: Sovereign Ladies: Sex, Sacrifice, and Power--The Six Reigning Queens of England
author:  Maureen Waller 
description: Waller (<i>Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown</i>) highlights the triumphs and travails of England's six female monarchs: Anne, the two Marys, the two Elizabeths and Victoria. In Waller's view, Mary II and Victoria colluded in their own diminishment by domineering husbands. Elizabeth II, portrayed as passive and unimaginative, indulged her mother while wounding her husband by keeping the Windsor name, and surrendered her prerogative to choose a midterm prime minister. Often wrongly dismissed as a fat, sickly dullard, says Waller, Anne was politically shrewd and ambitions to be queen, instigating malicious rumors that her Catholic half-brother was a changeling. Waller says that the burning of Protestant Archbishop Cranmer for heresy was a propaganda disaster for Mary I, while image-conscious Elizabeth I promoted her own association with the Virgin Mary. Separate chapters for each sovereign make for repetitious reading on the Stuart sisters; other storieslike Mary I's phantom pregnancy and Elizabeth II's blunders after Princess Diana's deathare familiar. Yet revelations about the less frequently dissected Mary and Anne Stuart are welcome, and Waller's vigorous, substantive prose takes no prisoners, whether calling Edward VI a cold, imperious little prig or Prince Charles and siblings arrogant, spoilt and selfish. 16 pages of color illus.<i> (Aug.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  One daring encounter
  
  Binds her to his marriage bed!
  
  Part of Allied at the Altar: In England, innocent tea heiress Pavia Honeysett
  has always been judged for her face or her fortune. She would much rather
  return to her uncle’s palace in India. So to escape marriage to the aged man
  her father has chosen, she will ruin herself! But her red-hot night with Major
  Camden Lithgow changes everything. Suddenly, this stranger will become her
  husband...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Allied at the Altar
  
  When only a convenient wife will do!
  
  The face of Victorian London is changing. Innovation and reform is the order
  of the day. At the heart of this new Society are Conall Everard, Sutton
  Keynes, Camden Lithgow and Fortis Tresham.
  
  These four dashing heroes are determined to make their mark on the world. But
  what starts out as four convenient marriages will change these gentlemen’s
  lives forever...
  
  Don’t miss this new sexy quartet from Bronwyn Scott!
  
  Read Conall and Sof