Best Selling Books by Antonia Fraser

Award-winning historian Antonia Fraser brilliantly portrays a courageous and compassionate woman who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time. Caroline Norton dazzled nineteenth-century society with her vivacity, her intelligence, her poetry, and in her role as an artist''s muse. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, which included the young Disraeli. Most prominent among her admirers was the widowed Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the Prime Minister to court, suing him for damages on account of his ''Criminal Conversation'' (adultery) with Caroline. A dramatic trial followed. Despite the unexpected and sensational result—acquittal—Norton was still able to legally deny Caroline access to her three children, all under seven. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband. Yet Caroline refused to despair. Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, she chose to fight, not surrender. She channeled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. Over the next few years she campaigned tirelessly, achieving her first landmark victory with the Infant Custody Act of 1839. Provisions which are now taken for granted, such as the right of a mother to have access to her own children, owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society from the privileged to the dispossessed.

The present Viscount "Handsome Dan" refused to believe in the evidence of the "Decimus Ghost," but there were others in the household who did, and when Jemima Shore started researching the ghost, she ended up investigating a murder.

Antonia Fraser''s Perilous Question is a dazzling re-creation of the tempestuous two-year period in Britain''s history leading up to the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, a narrative which at times reads like a political thriller. The era, beginning with the accession of William IV, is evoked in the novels of Trollope and Thackeray, and described by the young Charles Dickens as a cub reporter. It is lit with notable characters. The reforming heroes are the Whig aristocrats led by Lord Grey, members of the richest and most landed cabinet in history yet determined to bring liberty, which would whittle away their own power, to the country. The all-too-conservative opposition was headed by the Duke of Wellington, supported by the intransigent Queen Adelaide, with hereditary memories of the French Revolution. Finally, there were revolutionaries, like William Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides, the radical tailor Francis Place, and Thomas Attwood of Birmingham, the charismatic orator. The contest often grew violent. There were urban riots put down by soldiers and agricultural riots led by the mythical Captain Swing. The underlying grievance was the fate of the many disfranchised people. They were ignored by a medieval system of electoral representation that gave, for example, no votes to those who lived in the new industrial cities of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham, while allocating two parliamentary representatives to a village long since fallen into the sea and, most notoriously, Old Sarum, a green mound in a field. Lord John Russell, a Whig minister, said long afterwards that it was the only period when he genuinely felt popular revolution threatened the country. The Duke of Wellington declared intractably in November 1830 that "The beginning of reform is the beginning of revolution." So it seemed that disaster must fall on the British Parliament, or the monarchy, or both. The question was: Could a rotten system reform itself in time? On June 7, 1832, the date of the extremely reluctant royal assent by William IV to the Great Reform Bill, it did. These events led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, and set the stage for its growth as the world''s most successful industrial power; admired, among other things, for its traditions of good governance -- a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings to vivid dramatic life.

Antonia Fraser, a popular historian, has delved into archives across Europe to unravel the true story of the plot by fanatical Roman Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I at the opening of Parliament in 1605.

This gourmet collection of Jemima Shore features her very first case at a Catholic boarding school. Sleuth from the age of fifteen, Jemima goes on to solve other mysteries including The Case of the Parr Children, Your Appointment Is Cancelled, and Death of an Old Dog.

The body of a young man has been found floating in a pool on a remote island in the Scottish Highlands. It just happens to be the island that TV reporter Jemima Shore has rented for a holiday - a holiday that is rapidly falling apart.

''Love and Louis XIV'' centres around the Sun King and his relationships with numerous women. Divided into five parts, this work brings to life the vast edifice of Louis XIV''s court - the magnificence, artistic splendour, elaborate ritual and in some cases, absurdity and misery.

The story of King Charles II is one of enduring fascination. In this meticulously researched biography Antonia Fraser offers important judgements and reassessments on central questions of the reign, such as his patriotism and religious beliefs.

What were the women of the Civil War era like? What could they expect beyond marriage and childbirth in an age where infant and maternal mortality was frequent and contraception unknown? Antonia Fraser brings to life the many women she has researched.

Warrior Queens are found in almost every culture. Here, Antonia Fraser recounts the stories of such diverse national heroines as Zenobia of Palmyra, Elizabeth I, Queen Jinga of Angola and Catherine the Great, right up to modern day stateswomen.