The Boleyn Inheritance (2006)

Philippa Gregory, the best-selling author of The Other Boleyn Girl brilliantly depicts what life must have been like with maniacal Henry VIII in The Boleyn Inheritance. Gregory does this from the perspective of three women close to him: Jane Rochford, the sister-in-law of decapitated queen Anne Boleyn; his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves; and his fifth (and youngest) bride, Katherine Howard. Aided by research, Gregory not only gives a fascinating account of palace life but a harrowing first-person glimpse of Kitty's final hours before her beheading (miraculously, Anne was spared a similar fate). If only grade-school history books were written so vividly.