The Courtesan — Nigel Tranter

The second in the Master of Gray trilogy takes this seventeenth-century story of war and intrigue in Scotland to the next generation - the Master's illegitimate daughter.

Unacknowledged daughter of the Master of Gray, the young Mary inherited her father's amazing good looks and talent for intrigue. Her forbidden love for the young Duke of Lennox showed that her father had also passed on his own passionate nature. Coming to maturity in a Scotland torn by violent conflict, she was wise beyond her years. She needed to be, during the harsh years of the first half of the seventeenth century.

This gripping novel by one of the world's foremost historical novelists shows how Mary determined to counteract her father's plotting and save Protestant Scotland from the threat of the Catholic Inquisition.

'Through his imaginative dialogue, he provides a voice for Scotland's heroes' Scotland on Sunday