Moran, Michelle

"... the story of Queen Lakshmi--India's Joan of Arc--who against all odds defied the mighty British invasion to defend her beloved kingdom. Told from the unexpected perspective of Sita--Queen Lakshmi's most favored companion and most trusted soldier in the all-female army."--Provided by publisher.

"From the internationally bestselling author of Nefertiti and Cleopatra's Daughter comes the breathtaking story of Queen Lakshmi--India's Joan of Arc--who against all odds defied the mighty British invasion to defend her beloved kingdom. When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly no match for the might of the English. But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising challenge. Instead of surrendering, Queen Lakshmi raises two armies--one male and one female--and rides into battle, determined to protect her country and her people.

When Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives to avoid capture when Octavian invaded Egypt, their orphaned children, ten-year-old twins Selene and Alexander, were sent by Octavian to live with his sister. While hoping to one day return to Egypt, the twins come of age in Rome and are drawn into the politics of the court.

Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of sculpting in wax by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum. Before photography and literacy for the common people, the wax museum showed the public what well-known figures looked like, what fashions were popular, what food was eaten, and even what hairstyles were worn in different eras. But when the French Revolution happens Marie's talent for wax modeling saves her life and preserves the faces of the vanished French monarchy.

In 1351 B.C., Prince Amunhotep secretly kills his older brother and becomes next in line to Egypt's throne: he's 17, and the 15-year-old Nefertiti soon becomes his chief wife. He already has a wife, but Kiya's blood is not as royal, nor is she as bewitching as Nefertiti. As Mutnodjmet, two years younger than her sister, looks on (and falls in love), Amunhotep and the equally ambitious Nefertiti worship a different main god, displace the priests who control Egypt's wealth, and begin building a city that boasts the royal likenesses chiseled in stone.

Nefertari, the niece of the heretic Nefertiti who has been educated as a future queen, becomes involved in a political scandal when she and Ramesses the Great fall in love and marry.

Selene, the daughter of Marc Antony and Cleopatra, is taken with her twin Alexander and younger brother Ptolemy to Rome following the deaths of her parents where she grows up in the household of Octavia, the wife Antony abandoned for Cleopatra, and adjusts to life in the midst of political intrigue.