IN PERSON - Patricia Bernstein - A NOBLE CUNNING

Brazos Bookstore will host Patricia Bernstein in person on Thursday, March 9 at 6:30pm.

A thrilling tale, based on a true story, of one woman's tremendous courage and incomparable wit in trying to rescue her husband from the Tower of London the night before he is to be executed.

The heroine of A Noble Cunning, Bethan Glentaggart, Countess of Clarencefield, a persecuted Catholic noblewoman, is determined to try every possible means of saving her husband's life, with the help of a group of devoted women friends.

Amid the turbulence of the 1715 Rebellion against England's first German king George I, Bethan faces down a mob attack on her home, travels alone from the Scottish Lowlands to London through one of the worst snowstorms in many years, and confronts a cruel king before his court to plead for mercy for her husband Gavin. As a last resort, Bethan and her friends must devise and put in motion a devilishly complex scheme featuring multiple disguises and even the judicious use of poison to try to free Gavin.

Though rich with historical gossip and pageantry, Bethan's story also demonstrates the damage that politics and religious fanaticism can inflict on the lives of individuals.

Patricia Bernstein grew up in Dallas. She earned a Degree of Distinction in American Studies from Smith College and, returning to Texas, founded a public relations agency in Houston, while publishing dozens of articles in publications as varied as Texas Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and The Smithsonian.

Her first book was a collection of first-person childbirth accounts from the 1890s to the 1990s. The second was The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP. The third was Ten Dollars to Hate: The Texas Man Who Fought the Klan about the millions-strong 1920s Ku Klux Klan. The book was a finalist for the Ramirez Family Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and was named one of the 53 best books ever written about Texas by the Austin American Statesman.

Patricia lives in Houston with her husband Alan Bernstein. They have three wonderful and very different daughters. A Noble Cunning is her debut novel, inspired by a story she heard during a visit to Scotland in 2014.