Rivals for the Crown — Kathleen Givens

With Scotland's freedom at stake, two childhood friends are caught in a web of intrigue and conspiracy, greed and passion....

1290: The Scottish throne is for the taking after a child queen perishes ... and while bitter foes clamor to seize power, England's Edward I has his own designs on the embattled northern nation. Thrown into the maelstrom of politics, bloodshed, and ambition is Rachel Anjou, exiled to the border town of Berwick after Edward expels all Jews from his kingdom; and her beloved friend Isabel de Burke, immersed in a courtly world of privilege and peril as a lady-in-waiting. In Berwick, dangers abound for Rachel, but the tall, dark Highlander Kieran MacDonald presents a risk of a different sort ... while Isabel attracts the notice of two men -- an English knight and a Highland outlaw. And as enmity between the lands reaches its violent peak, each woman must decide where her loyalty, and her destiny, lies....

With the "exquisite sense of time and place" (Library Journal), that distinguished her acclaimed novel On a Highland Shore, Kathleen Givens renders historic Scotland with pitch-perfect authenticity, and conjures unforgettable characters, both real and fictional, in Rivals for the Crown.