She came from nothing. One false note could send her back. Ten-year-old Bess is only good at one thing-singing, which has no place in her family's bleak existence. When her father sells her to the king of England, she balances the loss of all she's known against a world of music and plenty, and builds a new life as a royal minstrel, earning the nickname the king's songbird. Bess comes of age in the dangerous Tudor court, where the stakes are always high, and where politics, heartbreak, and disease threaten everyone from the king to the lowliest musician. Her life has one constant: Tom, her first and dearest friend. But when Bess intrigues with a young Anne Boleyn and strains against the restrictions of her life in the shadows, will she discover that the biggest risk of all is listening to her own stubborn heart?

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