Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

When Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall was published in 2009, it won the Mann Booker Prize.  When the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, was published in 2012, it also won the Mann Booker Prize.  The final issue of the projected trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is scheduled to be published in early 2015.  There is great anticipation - and expectation - for any book to follow such acclaimed predecessors.

The subject of this trilogy, which is biographical fiction, is Thomas Cromwell, a minister to King Henry VIII.  Cromwell rose from humble origins to become the right-hand man to Cardinal Wolsey and then succeeded Wolsey as the king's most powerful minister (1532-1540).  In the shark-infested waters of the English court, Cromwell is never

allowed to forget that he was born the son of a blacksmith.  But with pragmatism, intelligence and talent he manages to navigate through the turmoil of his time:  a king's divorce, a king's marriage, a queen's beheading, the Reformation.

As one who prefers biography to historical fiction, I found Mantel's novels to be an extraordinary achievement - a total immersion in 16th-century England with an exacting knowledge of personalities and conflicts.  The bonus here is the level of writing, writing to be read again, read aloud, read to be shared.