The Virgin's Bastard

by Robert P. Wells

Overview

Epic in scope and scale, The Virgin’s Bastard features a large cast of characters to tell the dramatic story of the first two tumultuous years of the reign of Elizabeth I. Sir William Cecil, England’s leading statesman, guides his brilliant but inexperienced young Queen in her struggle to secure her throne against looming threats at home and abroad. Elizabeth inherits a broken realm from her incompetent half-sister, Bloody Mary—an England impoverished, religiously divided, weak and all but defenseless. To Catholics everywhere, she is an illegitimate ruler: Anne Boleyn’s royal bastard, and a heretic threatening their beliefs. Elizabeth relies on Cecil, her trusted chief advisor, in navigating England’s perilous situation as they confront political rivalries at court, diplomatic meddling, and international intrigue—especially treacherous French plans to invade and conquer England, to overthrow Elizabeth in favor of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots.

As war threatens, her subjects expect Queen Elizabeth to marry a foreign prince for reasons of state. But her heart belongs to her favorite courtier, Lord Robert Dudley—an ambitious nobleman who loves her, and who covets a kingship, but who is married already. How will Cecil outwit France, their greatest adversary in Europe? Will Elizabeth surrender to her forbidden desires? And will Lord Robert conspire to be rid of his estranged wife Amy, so he can marry the Queen himself? Discover the surprising answers in The Virgin’s Bastard.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163398287
Publisher:	Robert P. Wells
Publication date:	11/22/2019
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	590 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Preston Wells, Ph.D., is a native Californian who led a peripatetic existence for decades, having lived for long periods of time in Los Angeles, Chicago, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Sydney, San Francisco, and central Illinois. Graduating summa cum laude from UCLA, Dr. Wells attended graduate school at the University of Chicago (M.A.), then earned his doctorate in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In Edinburgh, he earned a postgraduate scholarship and a Writer’s Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council for his poetry. He has taught undergraduate courses at UCLA, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Melbourne, and Millikin University in Illinois, among other institutions of higher education. Dr. Wells has worked and played variously as a rock ’n roll drummer and band manager in L.A. in the late 1960s; the director of a day care center for children, the hardest job of his life; a librarian at UCLA; a university lecturer; an editor and book publisher; a marketing director for a software company; a Classical music radio presenter; a Vice President of Sales and Marketing for International Data Corporation, Australia. Among other things. But Dr. Wells spent most of his professional life as a senior executive in media, primarily the field of IT-related publishing, enjoying a front-row seat at the birth of the IT revolution that has, in one generation, fundamentally altered how mankind works, plays, and communicates. He has been Publisher of Australian Macworld Magazine, Mobile Business, and Upside Magazine, and a senior executive with Linux Magazine and Technology & Investing, Asia. During his career Dr. Wells has been a publisher of books, magazines and newspapers, serving also as an editor and writer. He has also published scholarly works; and he is a published poet in the UK, authoring Journeyman: Selected Poems in 1983, also available as an eBook from online book retailers. Overlord / Underhand (2013) was his first novel, followed by its prequel, Judith in Hell (2014). Three True Tales (2015) is his first collection of short stories; Veteran’s Day (2016) his first play. At present, Dr. Wells and his wife Elizabeth happily lead lives of quiet desperation in obscurity in the middle of the Midwest, where they serve as indentured slaves to a Siberian Husky, Dakota, and a large black cat named Moggie. Contact the author online: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/auldmakar Twitter: http://twitter.com/auldmakar Alas, not that he checks these accounts regularly…