Vainglory

by Geraldine McCaughrean

Overview

Vainglory begins in France in 1429, the year of the Siege of Orléans, as Victoire de Gloriole regains possession of Vainglory, the family castle from the English following the Battle of Agincourt.

Having consolidated his position by marrying a beautiful Englishwoman, Victoire sets out to rebuild a dynasty and a castle. However some years on, he finds himself without a legitimate heir, and at war with a family of scheming cousins.

From Joan of Arc and the 15th century wars with the English through to Catherine de Medici and the slaughter of the Huguenots, Vainglory tells the story of a power-hungry family who will let nothing and no one get in their way. Cleverly plotted and beautifully written, it is a historical novel of rare class

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162362616
Publisher:	Romaunce Books
Publication date:	01/27/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Geraldine McCaughrean was born and grew up in North London. She was the youngest of three children. She studied teaching but found her true vocation in writing. She claims that what makes her love writing is the desire to escape from an unsatisfactory world. Her motto is: do not write about what you know, write about what you want to know.

Her work includes many retellings of classic stories for children: The Odyssey, El Cid, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Gilgamesh.
J. M. Barrie gave all rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and in 2004, to coincide with Peter Pan's centenary, the hospital launched a competition to find the author of a sequel. McCaughrean won the competition, after submitting a synopsis and a sample chapter. Peter Pan in Scarlet was released internationally on 5 October 2006, published in the UK by Oxford University Press and in the US by Simon & Schuster.

McCaughrean has written many other children's fiction books including The Kite Rider, The Stones Are Hatching, and Plundering Paradise. She has also written six historical novels for adults including: The Maypole (1990), Fire's Astonishment (1991), Lovesong (1996) and The Ideal Wife (1997).
As of 2013, she has launched an online novel based on the Hylas and Hercules myth, A Thousand Kinds of Ugly.

For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer McCaughrean was the British nominee in 2004 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition available to creators of children's books.[3] She was elected an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University in 2006 and a Fellow of the English Association in 2010. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2010.]

McCaughrean has won several annual book awards. For A Pack of Lies, a collection of historical stories in a frame narrative, she won the two most prestigious British children's book awards. The Carnegie Medal, conferred by the Library Association (now CILIP), recognises the year's best children's or young adult's book. The Guardian Prize is a once-in-a-lifetime award judged by a panel of British children's writers and limited to fiction books.

Editorial Reviews

''This is a saga with a difference...such invigorating little drops of satire''. Sunday Times

''It is a model of how this sort of thing should be done. '' The Daily Telegraph

Sunday Times