In 1480 John Collans greatest anxiety is how to circumvent the villages devil goat on his way to collect water. But the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends his life forever: John is not John Collan, not the son of Will Collan but Lambert Simnel, the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence, and has been hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crownand because Richard III has a habit of disappearing his nephews.

Removed from his humble origins and sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the thrones rightful heir, Lambert is put into play by his masters. He learns the rules of etiquette in Burgundy and the machinations of the court in Ireland, where he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed and manipulative daughter of his Irish patrons, a girl imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Joan has two paths available to hermarry or become a nun. Lamberts choices are similarly stark: he will either become king or die in battle. Together they form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.

Inspired by a footnote to historythe true story of the little-known Simnel, who was a figurehead of the 1487 Yorkist rebellion and ended up working as a spy in the court of King Henry VIIThe Pretenderis historical fiction at its finest, a gripping, exuberant, rollicking portrait of British monarchy and life within the court, with a cast of unforgettable heroes and villains drawn from fifteenth-century England.