A powerful retelling of the extraordinary life of orphaned African princess, Sarah Forbes Bonetta. "You are not an aristocrat. An aristocrat is born to a noble family. You were born into royalty. You are a princess." Set in 1860, this is the story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the intelligent, multilingual Yoruba princess from West Africa who became the protege of the British Queen Victoria. On the evening of her seventeenth birthday, she is told that her old name, her real name is Aina. Oma'ba Aina from the fallen Oyo Empire. Equipped with this knowledge, Sarah attempts to navigate life as a foster daughter, a protege and a young black girl in Victorian England. But can one really feel like royalty when the freedom of autonomy is something so far out of reach for a person of her gender and race? Victoria Princewill reimagines Sarah's life in England, telling the story of a girl living between two cultures, trying to create, and assert, her own identity. The first of two titles from Victoria that will focus on real Black women born into royalty A very exciting new voice in YA fiction Victoria aims to to shed light on women's stories that have been forgotten by history From the author of In the Palace of the Flowers.

Set in Iran at the end of the 19th Century --in the Persian royal court of the Qajars--, In The Palace of Flowers is an atmospheric historical novel about Jamila, an Abyssinian slave who stands at the funeral of a Persian nobleman, watching the rites with empty eyes. In that very moment, she realises that her life will never be acknowledged or mourned with the same significance. The fear of being forgotten, of being irrelevant, sets her and Abimelech, a fellow Abyssinian slave and a eunuch, on a path to find meaning, navigating the dangerous and deadly politics of the royal court, both in the government and the harem, before leading her to the radicals that lie beyond its walls. Love, friendship and the bitter politics within the harem, the court and the Shah's sons and advisors will set the fate of these two slaves. Highly accomplished, richly textured and elegantly written, In The Palace of Flowers is a magnificent novel about the fear of being forgotten.