Historian and novelist Philippa Gregory has given her readers another royal gem of a book. Gregory is known primarily for her historical novels, including her most famous, The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a movie starring Natalie Portman. In The Kingmaker’s Daughter, she looks again at life in the court.

Royal sisters Anne and Isabel Neville are among the richest heiresses of England in the 1400s. They are the daughters of the Earl of Warwick, the man who put many kings on their thrones: Richard, Duke of York; his sons Edward and George; and finally Henry VI. Gregory combines the fast-paced historical events of the years around the War of the Roses with the main battles and players of the time. All this circles around and through the fictional lives of Anne and Isabel – from their early days in court, to their role in the overthrow of kings, to Anne’s eventual coronation as wife of Richard III....