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Edward Charles

Lucrezia Tornabuoni, brought up in the Palazzo Medici alongside Cosimo's children, always expected to marry his charismatic younger son, Giovanni, but now in later life, she finds herself imprisoned in a loveless marriage with the gout-ridden elder son, Piero. Like Cosimo, she sees the future salvation of the family in the hands of her own son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, but how can she be sure he inherits the mantle before Piero ruins everything? For years she has groomed her son to be a great prince, and in the process to ignore the Medici Bank – whose wealth has funded the City and Republic of Florence. But now the economy is faltering, the money is running out, the burdens of leadership are becoming more onerous for her son, and she begins to question whether she has led him astray. Her difficulty is that in the closed society of Florence, there is no-one she can confide in. Then, while on a journey away from the city, she is approached by a young priest, Girolamo Savonarola, recently appointed to a teaching post in Florence and asking for guidance about the workings of Florentine society. In confessing the secrets of her family to this benign outsider, she is able to unburden herself of the various worries that plague her. But Savonarola may not be the simple monk he appears, his objectives proving troublesome in compatibility with Lucrezia's as the two characters hurtle towards a thrilling and unexpected ending.

Pen & Sword Fiction

The House of Medici

Seeds of Decline

“Takes a novel angle on Cosimo [de Medici]’s rise to power by telling the story of his mistress, the Circassian slave Maddalena . . . an incomparable cast.” —Historical Novel Society
 
 Ever-loyal Maddalena, a diminutive, dark-skinned, blue-eyed slave, has borne Cosimo de Medici a son and seen him rise to a position in the Church. Now, late in life, she finds herself committed to a convent, as part of a scheme to prevent Cosimo’s sons from sending the Medici bank into ruin by hiding a fortune in gold for Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo, to inherit.
 
 But as the months go by, and the gold does not appear, her faith in Cosimo begins to wane and with it, her confidence in her own worth. Has she been duped? Approaching old age, she finds in the abbess a confessor, to whom she can confide her true story and perhaps, at the same time, convince herself that her life has been worthwhile. But the abbess has objectives of her own, and the two of them may not be on the same side.
 
 Edward Charles presents an enthralling evocation of fifteenth-century Florence in a novel of intrigue, wealth, deception, and high political drama. The largest and most respected financial institution in Europe in its prime, the Medici bank came to represent the might of a family of great influence and power, who scaled the very heights of human grandeur but were to suffer through one of the most catastrophic financial crashes of early banking as the survival of a dynasty hung in the balance.
 
 “A vivid tapestry of Florentine history . . . Imaginatively structured.” —Booklist (starred review)

Claymore Press

Inheritance of Power