The Beheading Game Audiobook By Rebecca Lehmann cover art

The Beheading Game

A Novel

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The Beheading Game

By: Rebecca Lehmann
Narrated by: Florence Howard
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Buy for $19.80

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Disgraced. Beheaded. And out for revenge . . .

We all know what happened to Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. But what if she woke up the day after her execution and took it upon herself to seek justice?

“Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

“Nobody was surprised at Anne’s conviction. The world loves to put a woman in her place.”

The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for being unable to give him a male heir and reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, she was ultimately executed based on trumped-up charges of adultery, incest, and high treason.

Anne escapes the Tower of London, sews her head back on, then sets out on a quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry her own lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. The stakes are high—if Jane gives birth to a rival heir, Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, will lose her claim to the throne. Traveling the streets of London in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute who becomes a trusted friend (and perhaps something more), Anne soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world.

A fantastical journey through the wilds of England and Tudor history, filled with danger and magic and steeped in Arthurian legend, The Beheading Game is a prescient reminder that “mouthy” women have always been punished. Now, thanks to debut novelist Rebecca Lehmann, nearly five hundred years after Anne Boleyn’s death, one of history’s most maligned women finally has the chance to tell her story. Alternate History Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Magical Realism Renaissance Science Fiction England Royalty Game Arthurian Tudor

Dear Listener,

What inspired me to write my debut novel?
"I wanted to showcase how fierce, intelligent, and complicated Anne Boleyn was. However, I didn’t want to write a retelling that erased her execution, because it’s what makes her story resonate nearly 500 years later as a cautionary tale of how powerful women are punished. Anne’s headless return is patterned on stories like Gawain and the Green Knight and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where the dead have unfinished business. Her resurrection also allows her to broaden her perspective, both as she reflects on her life and demise, as well as while she moves through Tudor England in disguise, more clearly seeing the struggles of common people."– Rebecca Lehmann, author of The Beheading Game
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I listened to this in one sitting. I was excited for this book to come out because the Tudors are a fascination of mine. That said, I wish the story had gone deeper into the world it creates rather than focusing on actual historical facts. There are some amazing ideas and situations in this story that could have been fleshed out now.

Good idea for a story, but…

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