Fiery French passions ignite

HISTORICAL

THE BURNING CHAMBERS by Kate Mosse (Mantle €14.99)

IN 1562, the divisions between Catholics and Protestants in southern France are widening. Minding her father’s bookshop in Carcassonne, Minou Joubert, 19, receives an anonymous letter sealed with a family crest containing the message: ‘She knows that you live.’

She is still puzzling over its meaning when a chance encounter with Piet Reydon, a Huguenot convert, sets in train life-changing events.

Labyrinth, Kate Mosse’s deeply-felt portrayal of the doomed Cathars, was a bestseller. The Burning Chambers is set later but is infused with the same empathy for, and intimate knowledge of, the Languedoc, and is the first in a sequence which will span 300 years of war and diaspora.

Impressively bold and ambitious, it features betrayals, broken friendship, family secrets and the horrors of fanaticism. Fans will love it.

THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER by Victoria Glendinning (Duckworth Overlook €19.25)

AFTER Henry VIII declares himself head of the Church,

JANE SEYMOUR: THE HAUNTED QUEEN by Alison Weir (Headline Review €18.75)

WHAT more could be written about Henry VIII’s six queens? The answer in Alison Weir’s third title in her fictional tour de force is: quite a lot.

As shown in her biographies, she has a knack of grounding her subject in interesting and

replacing the Pope, a mighty plunder of the rich abbeys and religious houses begins. Among those looted is Shaftesbury Abbey, where Agnes Peppin, a butcher’s d a u g h t e r, i n t e n d e d t o spend her life as a nun. Cast out, her survival is...