The Wise Woman

(Paperback)

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Description

Reissue of Philippa Gregorys disturbing novel of passion and betrayal in Tudor England.
A haunting story of a womans desire in a time of turbulence.

Alys joins the nunnery to escape hardship and poverty but finds herself thrown back into the outside world when Henry VIIIs wreckers destroy her sanctuary. With nothing to support her but her looks, her magic and her own instinctive cunning, Alys has to tread a perilous path between the faith of her childhood and her own female power.

When she falls in love with Hugo, the feudal lord and another womans husband, she dips into witchcraft to defeat her rival and to win her lover, but finds as her cynical old foster-mother had advised that magic makes a poor servant but a dominant master. Since heresy against the new church means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alyss danger is mortal. A womans powers are no longer safe to use

Reviews

Praise for 'The Wise Woman': 'Compulsively readable.' Andrea Newman, Sunday Express 'Gregory's principal feat in this elaborate novel is the irrefutable artistry with which she lends her prose a constant sense of history!Success results from the tense, almost shocking contrast between serious issues -- religious doctrine, political integrity, social dynamics -- and flights of erotic fancy.' Sunday Times

Author Bio

Philippa Gregory is an established writer and broadcaster for radio and television. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. She lives in the North of England with her family.