Crown of Aloes: A Novel About Queen Isabella of Spain

310 pp. "One of the most popular novelists writing today brings to life the character and times of one of the most intriguing monarchs in European history, Isabella I of Spain. Here, Isabella is allowed to tell her own story. On her bier she silently recounts her life, and from these self-critical memories there emerges for the reader a portrait of a queen both compassionate and strong-willed, perpetually caught in the schemes of courts and royalty, deeply hurt by unremitting strokes of fate, embroiled in almost continuous wars, who maintains her faith and pits of virtue against the expediency and cunning around her."