Heartsone is C. J. Sansom’s fifith spellbinding secret in the Shardlake series.

Summer, 1545. Britain is at war. Henry VIII’s invasion of France has truly gone badly incorrect, and a massive French fleet is definitely preparing to sail over the Route. As the English fleet gathers at Portsmouth, the country raises the largest militia army they have ever noticed. The King offers debased the money to cover the war, and England is in the grip of soaring inflation and economic crisis.

On the other hand Matthew Shardlake is about Heartstone given an intriguing legal case by a vintage servant of Queen Catherine Parr. Asked to research statements of ‘monstrous wrongs’ dedicated against a ward of the court, which have already included one mysterious death, Shardlake and his associate Barak trip to Portsmouth.

Once arrived, Shardlake and Barak end up in a town preparing to turn into a battle zone; and Shardlake uses the chance to also investigate the secret previous of Ellen Fettiplace, a girl incarcerated in the Bedlam. The emerging mysteries throughout the youthful ward, and the events that destroyed Ellen’s family nineteen years before, involve Shardlake in reunions both with an old friend and an old enemy close to the throne. Events will converge up to speed one of the King’s great warships, primed for battle in Portsmouth harbour .

Continue the gripping historical series with Lamentation and Tombland.