catherine de medicis

A novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de' Medici during the Renaissance follows Pedro Gonzales, an unusual man who, delivered by a slave broker into France's royal court, becomes the favorite of the queen who is determined to find him a bride.

The Befanini family rules the kitchens of the de Medici and their allies, serving well by fortifying their patrons' reputations and influence with all the power that a brilliant meal can supply. Young Ginevra Befanini serves more directly as companion and confidante to Caterina de Medici, while Ginevra's brother Tommaso is learning his family's craft and enhancing it with his own ideas and talents. The political forces of Renaissance Florence pull and push at them; plague stalks them; and other alien forces move through the kitchens and the city, menacing Caterina and her friends.

Rachelle Macquinet, a couturiere from one of France's most celebrated silk-making families, struggles to keep her eyes on God when Queen Mother Catherine de Medici tries to implicate her beloved husband Fabien in an assassination plot.

Rachelle Dusbane-Macquinet accompanies her grandmother, a famous couturiere, to Paris to create a silk trousseau for the Royal Princess Marguerite Valois, and becomes caught up in the intrigue at the Court, risking her life to warn the handsome Marquis Fabien de Vendome of a wicked plot against his family concocted by the regent, Catherine de Medici.

A fictionalized account of the life of Catherine de Medici, wife to King Henry II and mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots, that examines the darker aspects of Catherine's life, including her desperate acts to win her husband's love and bear his children.