Katherine Longshore: GILT

BIO:  Katherine Longshore grew up on the coast of northern California.  She earned a B.A. in Cross-Cultural Studies and Communications from Humboldt State University, planning to travel and write.  Forever.  Four years, six continents and countless pairs of shoes later, she went to England for two weeks, stayed five years and discovered history.  She now lives in California with her husband, two children and a sun-worshiping dog.

Katherine writes Tuesdays on the YAMuses blog and is represented by Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management.

DEBUT:  GILT (Viking/Penguin, May 15, 2012)

In the Tudor age, ambition, power and charismatic allure are essential and Catherine Howard has plenty of all three.  Not to mention her loyal best friend, Kitty Tylney, to help cover her tracks.  Kitty, the abandoned youngest daughter of minor aristocracy, owes everything to Cat – where she is, what she is, even who she is.  Friend, flirt, and self-proclaimed Queen of Misrule, Cat reigns supreme in a loyal court of girls under the none-too-watchful eye of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.

But when Cat worms her way into the heart of Henry VIII and becomes Queen of England, Kitty is thrown into the intoxicating Tudor Court.  It’s a world of glittering jewels and elegant costumes, of gossip and deception.  As the Queen’s right-hand-woman, Kitty goes from the girl nobody noticed to being caught between two men – the object of her affection and the object of her desire.

Over the course of one gaudy, chaotic year, Kitty is forced to learn the difference between trust and loyalty, love and lust, secrets and treason.  And when the tide begins to turn against the young Queen, Kitty discovers all too late the true weight of the diamond collar around Cat’s neck.

FIVE BOOKS FOR THE APOCALYPSE: The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster), Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel), Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (Bill Bryson), A Room With a View (E.M. Forster), Roget’s Thesaurus