Sharon Kay Penman's historical thrillers have won her critical accolades as well as a devoted readership. Her 1982 literary debut, The Sunne in Splendour, is set, as are nearly all of her works, in medieval England--an era, as she ably shows, that was marked by royal treacheries at the top and the beginnings of a truly urban, democratic civilization at its other end. In her subsequent novels, Penman creates memorable characters from several social strata, and strives to show how "history," as chronicled--the foreign alliances, the intrigues at court--affected ordinary lives.

Penman herself believes that lessons of her novels are timeless: "I believe that human nature has not changed much over the centuries," the author remarked in an interview with Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA). "The trappings of civilization vary from one age to another, as do beliefs and superstitions. But the core of human emotions and...