About thirty years ago, a mother laid her newborn baby in a shoebox and left it in the backyard of an Italian restaurant. Now the baby, Rebecca, is a mother herself. A child of no one and nowhere, she has created her own unorthodox but tender family. Then this hopeful life is dealt a blow that could shatter even the strongest of ties. Now, Rebecca must face the future by delving into her mysterious past.
Dunmore's most ambitious work to date, Mourning Ruby is a meditation on memory and history-both personal and public. It's an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and the transcendent power of storytelling itself.

In the Shadow of the Crown

As Henry VIII's only child, the future seemed golden for Princess Mary. She was the daughter of Henry's first queen, Katharine of Aragon, and was heir presumptive to the throne of England. Red-haired like her father, she was also intelligent and deeply religious like her staunchly Catholic mother. But her father's ill-fated love for Anne Boleyn would shatter Mary's life forever. The father who had once adored her was now intent on having a male heir at all costs. 

The Battle of the Queens

The first half of the thirteenth century is dominated by two women, as proud and ambitious as they were beautiful, yet different in all other qualities. Isabella is flamboyant and passionate, a medieval Helen of Troy - wife to King John and mother to Henry III...Blanche of Castile is the serene and virtuous Queen of France, wife of Louis VIII and mother of Louis IX...The two women hated each other on sight. Isabella would stop at nothing, not even murder, in her passion to destroy the French Queen.

Victoria Victorious

At birth, Princess Victoria was fourth in line for the throne of England, the often-overlooked daughter of a prince who died shortly after her birth. She and her mother lived in genteel poverty for most of her childhood, exiled from court because of her mother’s dislike of her uncles, George IV and William IV. A strong, willful child, Victoria was determined not to be stifled by her powerful uncles or her unpopular, controlling mother. Then one morning, at the age of eighteen, Princess Victoria awoke to the news of her uncle William’s death. 

Dizzy

What would it be like to walk into your living room one day and meet a complete stranger who says she’s your mother? It happens to Dizzy on her twelfth birthday. Storm ("Please don’t call me mum!") arrives, and the nice, safe, predictable life Dizzy has made with her father is blown to bits. Storm convinces Dizzy to go away on a short holiday with her—something she says Dizzy’s father has agreed to—and so begins a wild, van-traveling, musicmaking, teepee-sleeping, patchouli-wearing summer! But soon enough the fun wears off, and Dizzy begins to realize that Storm is not the mother Dizzy always dreamed she’d be.