The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon – Philippa Gregory

From the author of THE WHITE QUEEN and THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, discover Philippa Gregory’s sweeping and passionate epic, The Wideacre TrilogyWIDEACRE is Philippa Gregory’s first novel, a tale of passion and intrigue set in the eighteenth century. Wideacre Hall, set in the heart of the English countryside, is the ancestral home that Beatrice Lacey loves. But as a woman of the eighteenth century she has no right of inheritance. Corrupted by a world that mistreats women, she sets out to corrupt others. No-one escapes the consequences of her need to possess the land…In THE FAVOURED CHILD, the Wideacre estate is bankrupt, the villagers are living in poverty and Wideacre Hall is a smoke-blackened ruin. But in the Dower House two children are being raised in protected innocence. Equal claimants to the inheritance of Wideacre, rivals for the love of the village, only one can be the favoured child. Only one can be Beatrice Lacey’s true heir.MERIDON is a desolate Romany girl, determined to escape the hard poverty of her childhood. Riding bareback in a travelling show, while her sister Dandy risks her life on the trapeze, Meridon dedicates herself to freeing them both from danger and want. But Dandy, beautiful, impatient and thieving, grabs too much, too quickly. And Meridon finds herself alone, riding in bitter grief through the rich Sussex farmlands towards a house called Wideacre – which awaits the return of the last of the Laceys.