The Tudors are England's most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle's gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen's lap--and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty, and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past--those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget. By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, de Lisle enables us to see the Tudor dynasty in its own terms, and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. De Lisle discovers a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; shows why the princes in the Tower had to vanish; and reexamines the bloodiness of Mary's reign, Elizabeth's fraught relationships with her cousins, and the true significance of previously overlooked figures. Throughout the Tudor story, Leanda de Lisle emphasizes the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline. Tudor is bristling with religious and political intrigue but at heart is a thrilling story of one family's determined and flamboyant ambition.

Hilaire Belloc's landmark study Characters of the Reformation argues that Western Europe's break from the Catholic Church was driven by a land-grab and looting of Church property by European noblemen. Belloc has little admiration for the so-called leaders of the time and credits the Reformation to behind-the-scenes players. Each chapter is a mini-biography and individuals covered include Anne Boleyn, Pope Clement the Seventh, Cecil, Richelieu, Laud, Oliver Cromwell, Descartes, Pascal and more.

J. M. Carroll's excellent history of the Baptist church and movement illustrates events over the centuries, with references to a chart appended at the beginning of the book. First released in 1931, Carroll's superb church history attracted great praise for successfully summarizing all major events and turning points in the history of Baptism. The author sets out his work chronologically, from the time Jesus Christ lived and died upon the cross in 25 - 35 A.D., to the initial manifestations of organised Christianity, its growth during the Dark Ages, the Reformation, and finally the 19th and 20th centuries. Named ""The trail of blood,"" for the amount of hatred and persecution Baptists had endured over the ages, this book sets out to demonstrate how Baptism grew from a small niche of believers into an accepted movement firmly in the mainstream of Christian faith. Carroll identifies and explains a number of violent persecutions by the Roman Catholic Church, which disagreed broadly with Baptist doctrine.