Deadly secrets and fatal decisions, Marie Antoinette thought she took her secrets to the grave. She was wrong.

Was Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, executed during the French Revolution for her worst crime or was there another that would have shaken the very foundations of the monarchy if it had become known? What was it?

Colourful characters that filled Marie's life spill from the novel's pages. The royal perfumer, candle-maker, hairdresser, fashion stylist, painter, jeweller and even her pastry maker were all part of an extravagant, indulgent lifestyle.

Go with her from Austria to the stunning royal estate of Versailles with the fairy-tale Trianon. Continue on to the filthy degradation of the prisons of revolutionary Paris and the faded glory of the Tuileries Palace, and share the lives, hopes and fears of real prisoners awaiting death in the feared Conciergerie.

In the shadow of the guillotine stand other actors in this drama, Madame Tussaud maker of death masks, Charlotte Corday the Angel of Death, Marat, Robespierre and more. The gruesome tricoteuses knit as the heads drop and Sanson operates his Lady Guillotine. Discover the disgust of the stinking, overflowing graveyards and burial quarry which have now become part of the catacombs of Paris.