Author Description

Mary Stuart: the name itself conjures up images of beauty, passion - and murder. Ever since her cruel death on the scaffold at Fotheringhay Castle, historians have hotly debated whether or not Mary conspired in the murder of her handsome, dissolute husband, Lord Darnley, in the explosion at Kirk O'Field in 1567. Now, more than four hundred years later, a mysterious scholar named Nicholas Segalla, who may - or may not - have lived centuries before as a Jesuit priest, solves one of history's most tantalizing puzzles. Branded a harlot by her fellow monarchs, Mary threw caution to the wind after the murder and married the man accused of being Darnley's killer, the womanizing Lord Bothwell. Overthrown by her subjects, the tragic queen fled to what would ultimately prove her doom at the hands of her cousin Elizabeth I of England. Segalla, whose own origins are surrounded in mystery, helps uncover clues about questions no one has ever been able to answer: Darnley's body was found unmarked and strangled in the garden; was he warned and by whom? Why were a chair, a rope, and a dagger found lying next to his body? Did the killers know Mary would not be spending the night with her consort? Who wrote the Casket Letters, those scandalous love missives that so incriminated Mary?