Castile for Isabella

Sep 13, 2025 3:11 AM

Author:Jean Plaidy

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The first book in the captivating Spanish Trilogy, focusing on the remarkable lives of Spain's most famous monarchs.

In the 15th Century, Spain is full of intrigue and threatened by civil war. The independent young princess Isabella has become the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother, kept as a virtual prisoner at the sordid court of her half-brother, France's Henry IV.

Just sixteen years old, all seems lost: is Isabella fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious womanisers in Castile?

Numbed with grief and fear, Isabella holds onto one cherished hope: that one day, she will escape her tormentors and marry Ferdinand, the handsome young Prince of Aragon - her only true betrothed. But the forces of Europe are ranged against them, and love's triumphs are rare...

Reviews

It's hard to better Jean Plaidy

—— Daily Mirror

Superb storytelling and meticulous attention to authenticity of detail and depth of characterisation ... one of the country's most widely read novelists

—— Sunday Times

In Living Nowhere, Burnside twins his poetic and storytelling talents as never before to produce a novel full of intrigue, atmosphere and startling imagery... Burnside is fond of the term alchemist; it applies to no one more than himself

—— Glasgow Herald

John Burnside is a mighty writer... this is writing to stun the sentence, halt the mind...This is the gaze of John Burnside. The burning gaze of a poet: intense, peculiar, off-kilter and deeply interesting... A mighty achievement

—— Sunday Herald

The understated relation between the three parts is haunting and the whole is a work of total conviction

—— Sunday Times

'One of the country's most widely read novelists

—— Sunday Times

Jean Plaidy has already established herself among the foremost of current historical novelists

—— Birmingham Mail

Jean Plaidy conveys the texture of various patches of the past with such rich complexity

—— Guardian

'A grand recounting of the second Punic War...Durham's epic is truly a big, magnificent, sprawling story complete with a sizable cast of compelling characters, intricately drawn battle scenes and fluid, graceful prose'

—— Booklist (starred review)

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