Queens' Play

Menaced by England and riven by internal discord, Scotland in 1548 clung to a single hope of survival as a nation and an alliance with France to be sealed by the betrothal of the five-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin. But once in France, Mary suffers a series of ominous accidents. Before George R. R. Martin there was Dorothy Dunnett . . PERFECT for fans of A Game of Thrones. ''She is a brilliant story teller, The Lymond Chronicles will keep you reading late into the night, desperate to know the fate of the characters you have come to care deeply about. '' The Times Literary SupplementQueen''s Play is the second book in the series-----------------------------''The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own''It is 1548 and seven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots, betrothed to her cousin the Dauphin, heir to the French throne, has been dispatched to France. But far from home and vulnerable, surrounded by the double-dealing and debauchery of a dangerous and unpredictable court, she suffers a series of ''accidents''. Her mother, Scotland''s Queen Dowager, orders Francis Crawford of Lymond to protect Mary, believing that at the very heart of Henri II''s glittering, decadent court is an assassin hired to kill the infant monarch. Lymond must secretly hunt down this individual before he himself is exposed . . ''Vivid, engaging, densely plotted -- are almost certainly destined to be counted among the classics of popular fiction'' New York Times''Melodrama of the most magnificent kind'' The Guardian