With a title like The Dark Queen (#352) you won't be surprised to learn that France's Catherine de Medici figures as one of the villains of this novel by Susan Carroll. She's steeped in black magic and implicated in murder and the St. Bartholomew's Eve massacre of French Huguenots in 1572. Her counterpart here is Ariane Cheney, Lady of the Faire Isle and a daughter of the earth, or white witch.
Ariane's mother once served Catherine de Medici at court, but ran afoul of her. Ariane has seen for herself what the Dark Queen's vengeance looks like, and is determined to protect her two younger sisters. She almost succeeds until the day that a young Huguenot captain serving Henry of Navarre seeks her out on her isolated island. He has witnessed the death of Henry's mother and is sure that Catherine is responsible. He needs Ariane's help to prove it, though. Ariane at first is reluctant to be involved in the matter as she has her own problems fending off the Comte de Renard. A chance meeting in the woods has led to Renard's relentless pursuit, claiming that Ariane is his "destiny". Add to the mix a zealous order of witch hunters unleashed on the Faire Isle by Catherine and there's plenty of peril, romance and magic to keep the reader entertained.
If you need to get your mind off your own problems, The Dark Queen is the first book in this series about Ariane, Gabrielle and Miribelle Cheney, promising lots of romantic entanglements and derring-do in sixteenth century France.
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