The Burning Chambers [antikvár]

Richard and Judy tell us why they love The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse Judy writes: The multimillion-selling 2005 novel Labyrinth changed author Kate Mosse's life. She invented a new genre of fiction - sweeping historical stories that put women's experiences firmly at their heart. Now she's returned, triumphant, to her roots with The Burning Chambers, the first of a new Languedoc quartet based on the Wars of Religion which tore France savagely apart for decades in the sixteenth century. For thirty-five years in the Languedoc and Toulouse, Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants) ripped each other to shreds in violent battles, secret assassinations and appalling physical torture. Amidst this terrifying chaos a nineteen-year-old Catholic girl, Minou Joubert, falls in love with a Dutch-born Protestant, Piet Reydon, a Huguenot convert and leader of a résistance movement raising funds for the Prince of Condé's Protestant army. Their relationship places them in great danger; Minou has received a cryptic, threatening note bearing an unknown seal. The message reads: 'She knows that you live.' Meanwhile Piet is in possession of a priceless holy relie, the Shroud of Antioch, said to have wrapped Christ's body after his crucifixion. Reydon's enemies are in hot pursuit to retrieve it. As the identity of the mysterious 'she' referred to in Minou's menacing message takes shape, the girl realises 'she' is bent on vengeance and Minou knows she must travel to a haunted château in the foothills of the Pyrenees to unravel a long-kept secret.