The City of Tears
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4.3 • 55 Ratings
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
A Sunday Times Best Paperbacks of the Year Pick
‘Mosse is a master storyteller’ – Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
Sweeping from Carcassonne to Paris and Amsterdam, The City of Tears by Kate Mosse is a thrilling story of one family’s fight to survive against the devastating tides of history . . .
May, 1572. For ten violent years the Wars of Religion have raged across France. But now, peace has been brokered and a royal wedding has been negotiated. It is a marriage that could see France reunited at last.
An invitation has arrived for Minou Joubert and her family to attend this historic wedding in Paris. What Minou doesn’t know is that her family’s oldest enemy will also be there, that the Jouberts will soon be scattered to the winds after tragedy strikes, and that a beloved child will disappear without trace . . .
The City of Tears is the second volume in Kate Mosse’s No. 1 bestselling series, The Joubert Family Chronicles. It is followed by the third instalment in the series, The Ghost Ship.
Praise for The Joubert Family Chronicles:
'Historical fiction to devour' — Anthony Horowitz, bestselling author of The Twist of the Knife, on The Burning Chambers
'An utterly absorbing epic' — Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Paris Apartment, on The City of Tears
'Meticulously researched and stunningly written' — Santa Montefiore, bestselling author of Wait for Me, on The Ghost Ship
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Following on from 2018’s bestseller The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears is the second in Kate Mosse’s series of three historical epics. Now, it’s 1572, less than halfway through France’s Wars of Religion, and the Catholics and Huguenots have been fighting for a decade already. But, peace could be on the horizon, with a royal wedding arranged by the two sides in the hope that France can finally be united. Given the Wars of Religion continued until 1598, you can work out for yourself whether things will go to plan (reading The Burning Chambers first is not necessary but perhaps advisable if you’re not a history buff.) The novel continues the story of Minou Joubert and her family, once again giving powerful insight into the ordinary, and in this case often heart-breaking, lives of those who lived through the waves of violence of that time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Mosse's vibrant sequel to 2018's Burning Chambers, the year is 1572 and Minou Joubert (aka Marguerite Reydon-Joubert, Ch telaine of Puiver) is now married to Piet Reydon, a Huguenot soldier, and the mother of two children, Marta and Jean-Jacques. Minou and her family leave the peace and quiet of their estate and head for Paris to celebrate the royal wedding of Charles IX's sister to Henry III of Navarre. In Paris, they get caught up in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the slaughter of Protestant Huguenots on the orders of the French king. In the chaos of those dark, dangerous days, seven-year-old Marta goes missing. As the years pass and Marta's fate remains unknown, Minou faces the uncertainties of life in the midst of religious conflict while dealing with the lethal machinations of her family's archenemy, ruthless Vidal du Plessis (aka Cardinal Valentin). She eventually flees France, taking refuge in Amsterdam, "her city of tears." The fascinating historical detail fuels the drama and keeps the plot zipping along. Wilbur Smith fans will want to check this one out. 75,000 announced first printing.
Customer Reviews
Useless
I am unable to read the book as it won’t scroll past page 1
Exciting
Emotional, family deep routed twisted with violence
The ultimate historical fiction journey
There’s no-one like Mosse to take you away so completely to another world, and real places with characters you care about. I devoured this in one day. Thank you Kate!