The City of Tears
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4.4 • 29 Ratings
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
A breathtaking historical novel of revenge, persecution and loss, The City of Tears by Kate Mosse follows on from her Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Burning Chambers.
May 1572: for ten violent years the Wars of Religion have raged across France. Neighbours have become enemies, countless lives have been lost, and the country has been torn apart over matters of religion, citizenship and sovereignty. But now a precarious peace is in the balance 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 in August. But what Minou does not know is that the Joubert family’s oldest enemy, Vidal, will also be there. Nor that, within days of the marriage, on the eve of the Feast Day of St Bartholomew, her family will be scattered to the four winds and one of her beloved children will have disappeared without trace . . .
Sweeping from Paris and Chartres to the City of Tears itself – the great refugee city of Amsterdam – this is a story of one family’s fight to stay together and survive against the devastating tides of history . . .
‘A gorgeously written, utterly absorbing epic . . . I absolutely loved it’ – Lucy Foley, author of The Hunting Party
‘A novel with vast scope and ambition, brilliantly achieved . . . I was utterly immersed in this spell-binding story’ – Rosamund Lupton, author of Three Hours
‘This is historical fiction to devour. Nobody does it like Kate Mosse’ – Anthony Horowitz on The Burning Chambers
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.