Treachery

No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of the author and journalist Stephanie Merritt. It was as a student at Cambridge researching a paper on the period that Stephanie first became fascinated by the rich history of Tudor England and Renaissance Europe. Since then, her interest has grown and led her to create this series of historical thrillers featuring Giordano Bruno.Stephanie has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. She has also written the contemporary psychological thriller While You Sleep under her own name. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian, and lives in Surrey with her son.

‘S. J. Parris is one of my favourite authors – and unquestionably our greatest living writer of historical thrillers. Few novelists inhabit a setting – any setting – with such confidence and command; fewer still devise plots of such cunning and craft’ A.J. Finn, No. 1 bestselling author of The Woman in the Window ‘Hugely enjoyable… It’s played straight, but never humourlessly so, and there’s just enough “proper” history amid the intrigue to keep purists on side’ Guardian‘With its twisting plot and vivid scene-setting, TREACHERY confirms Parris’s growing reputation as a writer of historical thrillers’ Sunday Times‘An evil bookseller and a terrifying brothel lie ahead; what’s not to like? Gripping and fun’ Observer‘Parris’s Giordano Bruno series has been a joy. Her Elizabethan England is loud, pungent and blessedly free of some of the genre’s more egregious clichés. She wears her research lightly: at home with the detail of the period, she is quite happy to engage in a little creative anachronism to bring the story home’ Telegraph‘There are echoes of CJ Sansom’s Shardlake series here. But Parris is better than the usual run of imitators. Her prose is taut and compelling. Her wielding of the historical material is always convincing but never overwhelming’ The Times‘This is historical mystery fiction at its finest’ Publishers WeeklyPraise for S. J. Parris: ‘Impossible to resist … Parris creates a convincing sense of the past, woven with so much intrigue that the head fairly spins’ Daily Telegraph‘It has everything – intrigue, mystery and excellent history’ Kate Mosse‘Parris writes with confident ease of Tudor London … The dialogue balances nicely on a tightrope of period phrases and cut-to-the-chase colloquialisms. More, please’ The Times‘Full of surprises … an imaginatively satisfying addition to the many real intrigues surrounding the imprisoned Mary Stuart and the threats to Elizabeth’s security’ TLS