Crown of Destiny — Sandra Worth

The sequel to the award-winning The Rose of York: Love & War Shakespeare claims Richard III murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, for their throne, but Crown of Destiny tells a different, well-documented and dramatic story. Here is the reluctant king whose little known legacy of Blind Justice will, centuries later, flower into modern Western democracy. Set in Malory's England during the Wars of the Roses, the fifteenth century is a dangerous era when the passions of a few determine the fate of a nation. After Edward IV's death in 1483, his detested queen Elizabeth Woodville makes a grab for power in a court rotten with intrigue. To avert civil war, Richard of Gloucester must betray his brother's secret, for which another brother has already died. With war looming, to protect those he loves, Richard is forced into the most excruciating decision of his life, one that will change the course of history. The Rose of York: Crown of Destiny continues a story that speaks to the core of our human existence. Depicted through magical and skillful prose and drawn with great passion and insight, Worth's Richard III is the Richard no reader can ever forget.—Wendy Dunn, author of Dear Heart, How Like You This?, winner of the 2003 Glyph Award for Best Adult Fiction. I have never read another novelist who shows such a convincing feel... She makes a point of not saying anything contrary to the historical record, of which she has an encyclopedic knowledge. Crown of Destiny has...more politics than the first novel of this trilogy, Love & War, my Favorite Romance Read of 2003. Even though I know what will happen in the final novel, Fall from Grace ... I look forward to it with sympathetic trepidation. All three are multiple award winners.—Joy Calderwood, Reviewers Choice Reviews Worth has done meticulous research... Though conversations and some incidents must of necessity be invented, she makes them seem so real that one agrees this must have been what they said, the way things happened.—Myrna Smith, Reading Editor, Ricardian Register, Quarterly Publication of the U.S. Richard III Society, Inc.