Wolf Hall is the first book in Hilary Mantel’s projected trilogy about England in the tumultuous 16^th century as king and nation planned, prayed, and plotted for a successor to Henry VIII. A villain in Robert Bolt’s “A Man For All Seasons,” Thomas Cromwell here is the charmer/bully/ idealist/opportunist hero of the same saga. (Bolt’s “man for all seasons” was Sir Thomas More, who in Mantel’s telling is a sanctimonious prig.)

And saga it is with a cast of scores, all portrayed in detail as Mantel captures the atmosphere of the times with her adroit blending of fact and fiction. Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

From The Washington Post: “Enfolding cogent insights into the human soul within a lucid analysis of the social, economic and personal interactions that drive political developments, Mantel has built on her previous impressive achievements to write her best novel yet.”