The Tournament

Reilly is a unique, vivacious guide in this entertaining trip to the world’s first international chess tournament in 16th-century Constantinople, complete with murders, political and religious intrigues, and the assorted opulence and decadence of Sultan Suleiman’s Ottoman Empire. Reader Firth gives quite a performance as the curious, naive, strong-willed, and utterly charming protagonist Princess Bess, the 13-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and the late Anne Boleyn, who is on a journey with her brilliant tutor, Roger Ascham. Her vocal expertise is displayed as the future queen meets and matches wits with the sultan’s officious, misogynistic grand vizier, flirts with an arrogant, heavily accented teenage Prince Ivan of Muscovy (Bess claims to be the one to label him Ivan the Terrible), peeks breathlessly into the sultan’s son’s ultrahedonistic group-sex soirees, and assists Ascham as he searches for the murderer of six boys. Firth’s winning presentation of Reilly’s imaginative faux-historical yarn would be sinful to miss. A S&S/Gallery hardcover. (July)