The French Lesson - Couverture rigide

'Georgette Heyer meets Flashman ... A gleefully modern retelling of a juicy chapter in history' The Times

'Rubenhold unfolds a complicated plot with great dexterity, brilliantly evoking a society in which traditional bonds are being sundered' Sunday Times

'Compelling and operatic...Reads like a modern thriller’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, author of The Romanovs

'A dark and irresistible historical novel' LUCY WORSLEY

'Fast, funny, excoriating, scary, sexy… and such a *very* satisfying ending. The power is in the voice: I’ve rarely read such a powerful voice in fiction' MANDA SCOTT

1789: Henrietta Lightfoot, a young Englishwoman, trips on her silk gown as she runs for her life along the bloodstained streets of revolutionary Paris. She finds refuge in the opulent home of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, the city’s most celebrated courtesan. But heads are rolling, neighbours fear neighbours, and masters whisper before servants. As the sound of the guillotine echoes outside, within the gilded salons of high society Henrietta becomes a pawn in a vicious game of female power. How will she survive in a world where no one can be trusted?

'Dark and delicious' Red Magazine

Paris, 1792

It was a head, but one so bloodied, so rolled in filth, that it was scarcely recognisable but for its long red curls. It had been stuck on a pike like a lump of bread upon a toasting fork ...
Henrietta Lightfoot, a young Englishwoman, trips on her silk gown as she runs for her life along the bloodstained streets of revolutionary Paris. She finds refuge in the opulent home of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, the city’s most celebrated courtesan. But heads are rolling, neighbours fear neighbours, and masters whisper before servants.

As the sound of the guillotine echoes outside, within the gilded salons of high society Henrietta becomes a pawn in a vicious power game.

Seductive and finely plotted, this tale of one woman's flight through the bloodiest times in history resonates with a sense of modern revolution and tyranny.
‘Georgette Heyer meets Flashman . . . A gleefully modern retelling of a juicy chapter in history’ The Times

‘Rubenhold unfolds a complicated plot with great dexterity, brilliantly evoking a society in which traditional bonds are being sundered’ Sunday Times

‘Compelling, operatic, modern’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, author of The Romanovs