The Master of All Desires by Judith Merkle Riley

Margaret returns home to a family in chaos. Surely there ought to be enough left over for a little thing like a ransom from the most bloodthirsty nobleman in France. Luckily she is accompanied by resourceful friends, one of whom is an alchemist convinced he is hot on the trail of the Green Lion, the secret chemical formula that will enable him to create gold. Pregnant and without a penny, she sets off for the war-torn continent to find and ransom her beloved. When her husband disappears in the Hundred Years War, she discovers her greedy in-laws have no intention of trying to retrieve him, because then the whole of the fortune she has inherited from Master Kendall will be theirs. The further adventures of Margaret of Ashbury, widowed by the death of Master Kendall, and remarried into a family of the petty nobility.

Purchase: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books a Million | Indie Bound Faith, humor, and a certain homely practicality keep Margaret afloat in a world that has lost its bearings, and bring her at last to true love. if all chronicles of earthly life were recorded with such drama, flair, and wit, the world would be filled with history majors.' -Los Angeles TimesĪmid the horrors of the Black Plague, a village girl receives a divine vision that sends her out into the world as midwife and faith healer, and straight into the chambers of the English Inquisition. a fourteenth-century story told with a twentieth-century sensibility.' -The New York Times Book Review 'Rich with the ambiance and flavor of the Middle Ages. Can Genevieve escape the stake? Who will live and who will die in the wake of the king's terrible vengeance? Shrewd, witty, and observant, Genevieve carries off her role as an ancient prophetess with flair, even though her heart is torn with a young girl's emotions.īut just as she is on the verge of discovering true love, the Chief of Police in Paris, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, is on the verge of discovering La Voisin's network of poisoners and sorcerers. In fact she is Genevieve Pasquier, a precocious, crippled adolescent girl with genuine prophetic powers, abandoned by her family and taken up and trained by La Voisin, the Shadow Queen, to enter the very highest court circles.

She is rumored to be over one hundred and fifty years old, with powers to read the future in the swirling waters of her oracle glass. Into this world of brilliant debauch and evil enters a dazzling and mysterious figure, the Marquise de Morville. Ladies of the highest fashion frequent the 'fortune tellers' of her secret society to purchase abortions, luck charms, and poisons as easily as they might order a new gown. So great is the power of La Voisin that even the king's mistress, Madame de Montespan, is dosing her royal lover with the sorceress queen's aphrodisiacs. It is the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and a Queen of Shadows rules in secret over Paris.

The Master of All Desires by Judith Merkle Riley