Carolly Erickson has 16 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 15 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 12 ratings. The most-rated is Her Little Majesty.
The Unfaithful Queen
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII, a novel about Catherine Howard, wife of Henry's later years Amid the turbulent, faction-ridden late reign of the fearsome Henry, eager high-spirited Catherine Howard caught the king's eye - but not before she had been the sensual plaything of at least three other men. Ignorant of her past, seeing only her youthful exuberance and believing that she could make him happy, he married her - only to discover, too late, that her heart belonged to his gentleman usher Tom Culpeper. As the net of court intrigue tightens around her, and with the Tudor succession yet again in peril because of Prince Edward's severe illness, Queen Catherine struggles to give the angry, bloated, and impotent king a son. But when her relations turn against her, she finds herself doomed, just as her cousin Anne Boleyn was, to face the executioner. The Unfaithful Queen lays bare the dark underbelly of the Tudor court, with its sugared rivalries and bitter struggles for power, where a girl of noble family could find herself sent to labor among the turnspits in the kitchens or - should fortune favor her - be exalted to the throne.
©2012 Carolly Erickson (P)2012 Macmillan Audio
Great Catherine
Summary
Prize-winning historian and biographer, Carolly Erickson has created an eminently readable biography that recognizes the humanity of Great Catherine—Empress of Russia—with her majesty and immense capability. Dispelling some of the myths surrounding her voracious sexual appetite, the biographer portrays Catherine as a lonely woman far ahead of her time—achieving greatness in an era when women were executed on a husband’s whim.
©1994 Carolly Erickson (P)1995 Recorded Books, LLC
Her Little Majesty
Summary
Her Little Majesty is a fresh and fascinating portrait of the diminutive monarch who ruled the vast British empire for over 60 years. Award-winning biographer and historian, Carolly Erickson, transports you behind the walls of Buckingham Palace to introduce you to the quirky, loveable Queen Victoria—revealed only to her closest associates. Emotionally deprived, inadequately educated, and socially isolated for much of her life, young Victoria felt ill-prepared to ascend the throne. But the 19-year-old queen met her coronation day with outward dignity and confidence—then went home to bathe her pet dog. Even though her frequent temper tantrums and neurotic obsessions would have critics repeatedly fearing for her sanity, she became a powerful ruler, relentlessly leading her country through devastating wars and sweeping political reform. Carolly Erickson draws on diaries, letters, and historical documents to pen this dramatic account of England’s popular matriarch and the turbulent era that carries her name. Narrator Nelson Runger will hold you enthralled as the glory and the adversities of the Victorian age unfold.
©1997 Carolly Erickson (P)1997 Recorded Books, LLC
To the Scaffold
Summary
To this day Marie Antoinette remains one of history’s most misunderstood heroines. How she triumphed over the petty jealousies and backstairs rivalries of the court, how she sustained a good-hearted but malleable king, and how she was transformed from French queen to Austrian “whore,” is the story told with skill and fascinating detail.
©1991 Carolly Erickson (P)1991 Recorded Books, LLC
The Tsarina's Daughter
Summary
Daria Gradov is an elderly grandmother living in rural western America in the 1980s. What neighbors, and even her children, don't know is that she began her life as the Grand Duchess Tatiana, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. The Tsarina's Daughter centers around young Tania, who lives a life of incomparable luxury in pre-Revolutionary Russia, from the magnificence of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to the family's private enclave outside the capital. Then into Tania's life comes a young soldier whose life she helps to save and who becomes her partner in daring plans to rescue the imperial family from the executioners' bullets.
©2008 Carolly Ericksen (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America
The First Elizabeth
Summary
In this remarkable biography, Carolly Erickson brings Elizabeth I to life and allows us to see her as a living, breathing, elegant, flirtatious, diplomatic, violent, arrogant, and outrageous woman who commands our attention, fascination, and awe. With the special skill for which she is acclaimed, Carolly Erickson electrifies the senses as she evokes with total fidelity the brilliant colors of Elizabethan clothing and jewelry, the texture of tapestries, and even the close, perfumed air of castle rooms. Erickson demonstrates her extraordinary ability to discern and bring to life psychological and physical reality.
©1983 Carolly Erickson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Bloody Mary
Summary
Here is the tragic, stormy life of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Her story is a chronicle of courage and faith, betrayal and treachery - set amidst the splendor, pageantry, squalor, and intrigue of 16th-century Europe. The history of Mary Tudor is an improbable blend of triumph, humiliation, heartbreak, and devotion - and Ms. Erickson recounts it all against the turbulent background of European politics, war, and religious strife of the mid-1500s. The result is a rare portrait of the times and of a woman elevated to unprecedented power in a world ruled and defined by men.
©1978 Carolly Erickson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Josephine
Summary
When, in 1804, Josephine Bonaparte knelt before her husband Napoleon to receive the imperial diadem, few in the vast crowd of onlookers were aware of the dark secrets hidden behind the imperial facade. To her subjects she appeared to be the most favored woman in France: alluring, wealthy, and with the devoted love of a remarkable husband who was the conqueror of Europe. In actuality Josephine's life was far darker, for her celebrated allure was fading, her wealth was compromised by massive debt, and her marriage was corroded by infidelity and abuse. Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.
©1998 Carolly Erickson (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Last Wife of Henry VIII
Summary
From the luxuries of court to the last gory years of the outsize King Henry when heads rolled and England trembled, Catherine bestrode her destiny and survived to marry her true love. She was the least known of Henry VIII's six wives, but was the cleverest of them all. Alluring, witty, and resourceful, she attracted the king's lust and, though in love with the handsome Thomas Seymour, was thrown into the snakepit of the royal court. While victims of the king's wrath suffered torture and execution, Catherine withstood the onslaught, even when Henry sought to replace her with a seventh wife. She survived her royal husband, and found happiness with Seymour - but it was shadowed by rivalry with the young Princess Elizabeth, whose affection Seymour coveted. Catherine won the contest, but at great cost.
©2006 Carolly Erickson (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
The Favored Queen
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII comes a powerful and moving novel about Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, who married him only days after the execution of Anne Boleyn and ultimately lost her own life in giving him the son he badly needed to guarantee the Tudor succession. Born into an ambitious noble family, young Jane Seymour is sent to the court as a maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s aging queen. She is devoted to her mistress and watches with empathy as the calculating Anne Boleyn contrives to supplant her as queen. Anne’s singleminded intriguing threatens all who stand in her way; she does not hesitate to arrange the murder of a woman who knows a secret so dark that, if revealed, would make it impossible for the king to marry Anne. Once Anne becomes queen, no one at court is safe, and Jane herself becomes the victim of Anne’s venomous rage when she suspects Jane has become the object of the king’s lust. Henry, fearing that Anne’s inability to give him a son is a sign of divine wrath, asks Jane to become his next queen. Deeply reluctant to embark on such a dangerous course, Jane must choose between her heart and her loyalty to the king. Acclaimed biographer and best-selling novelist Carolly Erickson weaves another of her irresistible historical entertainments about the queen who finally gave Henry VIII his longed-for heir, set against the excitement and danger of the Tudor Court.
©2011 Carolly Erickson (P)2011 Macmillan Audio
Our Tempestuous Day
Summary
The tumult and opulence of England’s Regency era burst from the pages in this work of literary nonfiction by acclaimed author Carolly Erickson. When dementia forces King George III to vacate his throne, the kingdom slips into a decade marked with excess, scandal, and riots. King George has suffered bouts of mental instability before, but in 1810 he shows no signs of recovering. Public and government business halts as word of his condition leaks out. Hoping to control the crisis, Parliament appoints the king’s unpopular son Prince George IV as Regent or caretaker. But for the next nine years, this substitute ruler shocks the nation with his drunkenness, his mistresses, and his wanton spending. From seething mobs in the streets to Lucullan feasts in drawing rooms, historian Carolly Erickson vividly captures the nation in a troubled transition. With narrator Simon Prebble’s dramatic performance, the splendor and intrigue of Regency England are as enthralling as the most entertaining novel.
©1986 Carolly Erickson (P)1998 Recorded Books, LLC
Mistress Anne
Summary
As Maureen Quilligan wrote in The New York Times Book Review of The First Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn "was a real victim of the sexual scandals her brilliant daughter escaped, and a subject Ms. Erickson's sensitivity to sexual and political nuance should well serve." Indeed, Carolly Erickson could have chosen no more fascinating and appropriate a subject. Alluring and profoundly enigmatic, Anne Boleyn has eluded the grasp of historians for centuries. Through her extraordinarily vivid re-creation of this most tragic chapter in all Tudor History, Carrolly Erickson gives us unprecedented insight into the singularity of Anne Boleyn's life, the dark and overwhelming forces that shaped her errant destiny, and the rare, tumultuous times in which she lived.
©1984 Carolly Erickson (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Rival to the Queen
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII comes a novel about the bitter rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and her fascinating cousin, Lettice Knollys, for the love of one extraordinary man. Powerful, dramatic, and full of the rich history that has made Carolly Erickson’s novels perennial best sellers, this is the story of the only woman to ever stand up to the Virgin Queen: her own cousin, Lettie Knollys. Far more attractive than the queen, Lettie soon won the attention of the handsome and ambitious Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a man so enamored of the queen and determined to share her throne that it was rumored he had murdered his own wife in order to become her royal consort. The enigmatic Elizabeth allowed Dudley into her heart, and relied on his devoted service, but shied away from the personal and political risks of marriage. When Elizabeth discovered that he had married her cousin Lettie in secret, Lettie would pay a terrible price, fighting to keep her husband’s love and ultimately losing her beloved son, the Earl of Essex, to the queen’s headsman. This is the unforgettable story of two women related by blood, yet destined to clash over one of Tudor England’s most charismatic men.
©2010 Carolly Erickson (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
The Secret Life of Josephine
Summary
The best-selling author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and The Last Wife of Henry VIII returns with an enchanting novel about one of the most seductive women in history: Josephine Bonaparte, first wife of Napoleon. Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Josephine had an exotic Creole appeal that would ultimately propel her to reign over an empire as wife of the most powerful man in the world. But her life is a story of ambition and danger, of luck and a ferocious will to survive. Married young to an arrogant French aristocrat who died during the Terror, Josephine also narrowly missed losing her head to the guillotine. But her extraordinary charm, sensuality, and natural cunning helped her become mistress to some of the most powerful politicians in post-Revolutionary France. Soon she had married the much younger General Bonaparte, whose armies garnered France an empire that ran from Europe to Africa and the New World and who crowned himself and his wife emperor and empress of France. He dominated on the battlefield, and she presided over the worlds of fashion and glamour. But Josephine's heart belonged to another man - the mysterious, compelling stranger who had won her as a girl in Martinique.
©2007 AudioGO (P)2015 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette
Summary
For more than two centuries Marie Antoinette has been vilified as the heartless, frivolous queen who spent lavishly while her people starved. Now, in the tradition of The Birth of Venus and The Other Boleyn Girl, this moving novel tells her side of the story. Imagine that, on the night before she is to die under the blade of the guillotine, Marie Antoinette leaves behind in her prison cell a diary telling the story of her life - from her privileged childhood as Austrian Archduchess to her years as glamorous mistress of Versailles to the heartbreak of imprisonment and humiliation during the French Revolution. Carolly Erickson takes us deep into the psyche of France's doomed queen: her love affair with handsome Swedish diplomat Count Axel Fersen, who risked his life to save her on the terrifying night the Parisian mob broke into her palace bedroom intent on murdering her and her family; her harrowing flight from France in disguise, her recapture and the grim months of harsh captivity; her agony when her beloved husband was guillotined and her beloved son was torn from her arms, never to be seen again. Erickson brilliantly captures the queen's voice, her hopes, her dreads, her suffering. We follow, mesmerized, as she reveals every detail of her remarkable, eventful life, from her teenage years when she began keeping a diary to her final days when she awaited her own bloody appointment with the guillotine.
©2005 Carolly Erickson (P)2005 Audio Renaissance, LLC
The Memoirs of Mary, Queen of Scots
Summary
Born Queen of Scotland, married as a young girl to the invalid young King of France, Mary took the reins of the unruly kingdom of Scotland as a young widow and fought to keep her throne. A second marriage to her handsome but dissolute cousin Lord Darnley ended in murder and scandal, while a third marriage to the dashing, commanding Lord Bothwell, the love of her life, gave her joy but widened the scandal and surrounded her with enduring ill repute. Unable to rise above the violence and disorder that swirled around her, Mary plucked up her courage and escaped to England - only to find herself a prisoner of her ruthless, merciless cousin Queen Elizabeth. Here, in her own riveting account, is the enchanting woman whose name still evokes excitement and compassion - and whose death under the headsman's axe still draws forth our sorrow. In The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, Carolly Erickson provides another in her series of mesmerizing historical entertainments, and takes listeners deep into the life and heart of the 16th century's most fascinating woman.
©2009 Carolly Erickson (P)2009 BBC Audio