Read more
A Sunday Times Best Paperbacks of the Year Pick
'Mosse is a master storyteller' - Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
An epic historical adventure, sweeping from Carcassonne to Paris and Amsterdam, The City of Tears by Kate Mosse is the spellbinding second volume of The Joubert Family Chronicles.
Paris, 1572. For ten violent years, the Wars of Religion have raged across France. But now, peace has been brokered and a royal wedding negotiated that could see the country reunited at last.
An invitation has arrived for Minou Joubert and her family to attend this historic wedding. What Minou doesn't know is that her family's oldest enemy will also be there, that the Jouberts will soon be scattered to the winds after tragedy strikes, and that a beloved child will disappear without a trace . . .
A thrilling story of one family's fight to survive against the devastating tides of history, The City of Tears is the second novel in the series. It is followed by The Ghost Ship.
'Religious fanaticism, political intrigue and the heart-wrenching tale of a lost child . . . with women firmly centre stage' - The Mail on Sunday
Praise for The Joubert Family Chronicles:
'A tour de force' - The Observer, on The Burning Chambers
'An utterly absorbing epic' - Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Paris Apartment, on The City of Tears
'Meticulously researched and stunningly written' - Santa Montefiore, bestselling author of Wait for Me, on The Ghost Ship
About the author
Kate Mosse is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction writer. The author of eleven novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy, The Joubert Family Chronicles (the number one bestselling The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship and The Map of Bones), and number one bestselling Gothic fiction. Her highly acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World. The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, she is also the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Kate is also a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, President of the Festival of Chichester, an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Authors and a Trustee of the British Library. She was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List 2024.
Summary
The second instalment in The Joubert Family Chronicles. In the 16th century, from the Languedoc to Paris and Amsterdam, one family struggles to survive in the wake of the St Batholomew's Day massacre.
Foreword
From the Languedoc to Paris and Amsterdam, Kate Mosse’s novel sees the Joubert family caught up in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre and a frightening sequence of events thereafter . . .
Additional text
Gripping, complex and intensely atmospheric
Report
That rare thing, a novel with vast scope and ambition, brilliantly achieved, but also deeply personal, finely detailed and nuanced. I was utterly immersed in this spell-binding story Rosamund Lupton, author of Three Hours
