Falls the Shadow

By Sharon Kay Penman

Categories: History, Literature & Fiction

Sharon Kay Penman's 1988 novel, the second in her Welsh Princes trilogy, follows Simon de Montfort, the French-born Earl of Leicester, and his wife Eleanor, sister of King Henry III of England. As Henry's misrule provokes the barons to rebel, Simon leads the reform movement that helped shape early English parliamentary government, and the struggle ends in civil war and the battles of Lewes and Evesham in the thirteenth century.

Recommended by 1 person

• Hillary Clinton: “I've recently discovered the historical novels by Sharon K. Penman. I'm reading her series about King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Very interesting, not only well done, but really engrossing.”